James Cameron's Movies & Creations

After 12 Years, American Media Resumes War on James Cameron

2009-10-27T15:38:00.049-04:00

From the people who brought you, "Richard Jewell Guilty!" and "Superpowered Arabs Attack America with Anthrax!" Comes "James Cameron is Crazy!" (Again.)

In James Cameron's Spider-man scriptment, Spider-man does great things only to end up getting slandered by the media and beaten-up by cops. For reasons young Peter Parker can't quite understand, people seem to resent his moral goodness and his great achievements. A wealthy businessman exploit's Spidey's confusion at the public's hatred to try to get him to join him in a Machiavellian quest to rape and pillage the common man.

Carlton Strand:
The only thing they love more than a hero is to see that hero fail, fall, screw-up....to see him exposed with his pants down.... You know why? It lets them feel better about their own miserable lives.

Several people have noted similarities between Cameron's version of Peter Parker and the man himself.

While James Cameron is laboriously creating Avatar, an incredibly dynamic and profound David vs. Goliath epic like Hollywood hasn't produced in decades, we have an army of cultural critics waging war on him. All over again.

The media's assault on Avatar started right when the first preview was released (what a coincidence!) Now, I'm not talking about the mindless ninnying from the intellectual still-borns who call themselves “fanboys”. No, I'm talking about the far more serious slandering from the spiritual still-borns known as the “American media”.

After the Avatar preview was shown, here was how the media's first assault went:

AMERICAN MEDIA:

“In 1995, James Cameron invented a time machine and, with that time machine, Cameron traveled forward in the future to December of 2008. Like any good time-traveler would do, Time Traveler Jim made good use of his chrono-vessel and....went to the multiplex. At the ticket counter, Time Traveler Jim told the cashier, 'Gimme a ticket to the biggest turd now playing!' (They initially offered a ticket to the remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still, but Cameron refused to witness the bastardization of a sci-fi classic.)

So, Time Traveler Jim ended up seeing Delgo. Naturally, he had the whole theater to himself, and he used this time to take scrupulous notes.

After taking his notes on Delgo, Time Traveler Jim then promptly went back to his time machine (he was smart enough to make it look like a VW: they blend in in any era), traveled backwards in time to 1995, and wrote his 85-page 'Avatar' scriptment based off of his notes from the future.”

You think I'm kidding? That's what the media claimed. After all, it was a matter of public record that Avatar was written in 1995 (and that Digital Domain had even attempted proof of concept on some CGI back then) so, after doing their investigation and fact-checking, the media had to know that time-traveling was the only possible way that James Cameron could have possibly plagiarized Delgo. Therefore, the American media thinks James Cameron is a time traveler.

Okay, seriously now: it would've taken any honest journalist two minutes on Yahoo or Google – two minutes, max! - to see that any accusations that Avatar copied Delgo were facially bogus (and even libelous). But maybe the media's bribes from the Pentagon aren't as big as they used to be and so they can't afford an internet connection to run that Google search, 'cause the corrupt bastards actually ran with the accusations! 'NY Magazine', USA Today, and the HuffingtonPost.com all had posts alleging and/or intimating that Avatar's story was plagiarized from a movie that it chronologically preceded!

Believe it or not, this first serious attempt to slander Avatar and to libel Cameron didn't stick.

'Avatar' Producer Jon Landau Totally
Discredits Plagiarism Charge in 30 Seconds.

Maybe there was another reality TV star staging a hoax about a kid in a weather balloon, but somehow or another, the Delgo idiocy, mercifully, fizzled away quickly.

But the media – probably taking a cue from their johns in the Department of Defense – were just probing Cameron's defenses. It was a salvo shot, and it missed. The media's next shot, though, would be a guided munition aimed right at Cameron himself.

This was fired in the October 26th issue of 'The New Yorker' magazine. (And really, what better publication to chronicle a Canadian citizen living in California than one called "The New Yorker"? I expect and demand that my next issue of "Michigan History" magazine devote twelve pages to a biopic of Chinese Olympian gymnast Li Ya.)

This is the headline from the libelous (I'll get to that in a sec) article in 'The New Yorker':

James Cameron....He's CRAZY!!!

Okay, okay: it was actually called "A Man of Extremes", but if you could put those Annie Hall what-they-really-meant subtitles on it, that's what it would've been titled. The article tries repeatedly to spin innocuous – or even flattering – traits of Cameron into evidence of psychosis. Along the way, they wrote at least one potentially libelous lie (knowingly and maliciously) and it appears that they also copied some highly dubious claims from tabloid biographer Marc Shapiro.

Here's the demonstrative lie in the article:

"After he finished making 'True Lies,' Cameron called Kubrick, by then a recluse, and invited himself over."

False. As reported in a Paula Parisi article for Wired magazine at the time it actually happened, Kubrick invited Cameron over to his house and Cameron excitedly obliged. Kubrick had been speaking with anybody who could teach him about visual effects for his sci-fi opus, A.I. After ILM had tired of Kubrick's games or his indecision (nobody really knows), Cameron, as the CEO of Digital Domain, was next in line. From Wired magazine:

"I was really honored, 'Oooh, Stanley Kubrick wants to see my movie!'" remembers Cameron. "But it turns out that he does this with everybody. He's like a brain vampire. He likes to get people and suck what they're doing out of their heads." The two viewed the film on an editing machine at Kubrick's home and talked about the effects shot by shot.

It's a good bet that 'The New Yorker' had the same source for that I did. If so, this means that they consciously chose to publish a malicious lie.

The whole 'New Yorker' article reads exactly – and I mean exactly – like the petty, critical "biography" of Cameron written by Marc Shapiro in 2000. Both of them repeatedly use transparently bias turns of phrases to make Cameron look like a wacko. And there are also some very explicit symmetries between them that could not have happened by accident. For instance, 'The New Yorker' article claims, "[Cameron's cast and crew] call the dark side of his personality Mij—Jim backward."

Okay, here's the deal: I've been an enthusiastic fan of Cameron's since 1994 and I had never read this anywhere or heard this from anyone. Ever. ....Except in Shapiro's biography. So maybe 'The New Yorker' did some plagiarizing of their own? A Google search for “James Cameron+MIJ” turns up nothing save for this article and excerpts from Shapiro's book. Furthermore, the article's account of how Cameron responded to the PCP poisoning on the set of Titanic also sounds suspiciously like Shapiro's unique account. (For a version of that event that's probably much more in line with reality, read the book Titanic and the Making of James Cameron by the terrific showbiz writer Paula Parisi).

Here's an example of the hit piece in 'The New Yorker' using disparaging turns of phrases to make Cameron look bad:

“[James Cameron] is an exacting critic, and an exuberant showoff....”

Do you know what the context of this quote is? Cameron is telling a computer modeler that his CG stone arch looks fake. Cameron then goes into geological detail explaining precisely why it looks fake. So, according to 'The New Yorker', if you're smart and you expect your employees to do what you hire them to do, you're an “exuberant showoff”. No, 'New Yorker', Cameron's not “showing off” his brains....it's just that you're dumb as hell. Maybe if you'd taken more science classes in college instead of all your Psychology and Marketing bullshit and Womynist Messages in 19th Century Vampire Lit 101, then you wouldn't think that a man who can spot a real rock from a fake rock is some sort of exotic wizard gloating about his magic. (FYI: Cameron only went to junior college and didn't even graduate from there....yet he's ten-times as smart as these useless motherfuckers at 'The New Yorker'! Actually, though, I think that this says more about Americans' intellect vs. Canadians' than it does about 'The New Yorker' magazine.)

Finally, 'The New Yorker' goes in for the kill. Cameron had invited the reporter(s?) into his home. The article paints a scene of placid domestic tranquility – the dog's names, the breakfast foods, what Cameron's wearing – and then, in a big “Gotcha!” moment, they set us up to expose James Cameron's craziest feature yet. This is his deepest, darkest secret. James Cameron is officially nuts, 'The New Yorker' says, because....because....He's protecting his family and his home from California brush fires!

Whoa, snap! You've got him now, 'New Yorker'!

I'm deadly serious. Cameron proudly details his system for protecting his wife, children, and property from fires (they pump the water from the pool and mix it with some flame-suppression foam) and the reporter writes about it like it's this horribly disturbing revelation. (Of course, servile Americans can only think of one thing to do when there's a fire: wait for “the authorities”. There's nothing pathetic Americans love more than the thought of being saved by men in uniforms – preferably government men with guns. Modern Americans can literally watch a man choking to death at a restaurant and not bother to do the Heimlich maneuver because “the authorities will take care of it”. They can see a man getting savagely assaulted at a diner and literally pretend to not see it. That's always the answer for modern Americans: look to the government, especially government men with guns. If you're independent and aren't servile and deferential to the government....they call you crazy.)

Disappointingly (but totally predictably), a few people did take the bait on 'The New Yorker's “He's Crazy!” article. Theawl.com sneered “James Cameron, Loon, To Make Lots More Money Soon” when they linked to the hit piece. Then there were a lot of pages with words like “James Cameron Exposed” in their summation of it. The LA Times's online site had a page sneering at Cameron's protecting his family and his home from fires. So this media attack wasn't the total flop that the whole “Delgo plagiarism” attack was.

But now, the American media's found another rocket to launch at James Cameron. This time, they think they've really got him in their crosshairs. Here's the latest charge:

"There's an old science-fiction tale also about an alien traveling to another planet and having two bodies: one as a weak, helpless man and the other as somebody who's empowered by life in the new planet. This is just like 'Avatar'."

They're claiming that Avatar copied Superman.

Whoops! My bad. Let me try that again.

"There's an old fantasy story about blue creatures with tails who live in harmony with nature who are threatened by a powerful outsider. This is just like 'Avatar'."

The media is now claiming that Avatar copied The Smurfs.

No, I screwed up again! Okay, okay: I re-read the articles and now I get it.

"There's an old sci-fi novella about a paraplegic who controls an external body on another planet. This is just like Avatar'."

Seriously, that's it. The sci-fi novella is (which I've never read or heard of) was called 'Call Me Joe'. (You can read one synopsis at Wikipedia here.) The similarities to Avatar in 'Call Me Joe' are as follows:

The main character is a paraplegic.
The main character remotely controls a different body on another planet.
The main character begins to prefer his alien body to his human body.

I've sifted through several articles about this latest charge of plagiarism, and those are seriously the only similarities I can discern. Let me tell you something, if that's plagiarism, then I think that I get to sue everybody else named “David” for identity theft. If that's plagiarism, then K-Mart gets to sue every other merchant with the word “mart” in their name. And if that's plagiarism....then what does it say about welfare queen Michael Bay stealing Cameron's stories, actors, shots, and themes in every single one of his taxpayer-financed military propaganda movies (only to be lauded for his “fresh” style by the media).

The thing of it is, I actually wouldn't doubt that James Cameron did read 'Call Me Joe' and that, consciously or subconsciously, he was inspired by it....along with dozens of other sci-fi and historical stories. This is by his own admission. It's not breaking news, and it's not a bad thing.

But the media thinks that this slanderous accusation of plagiarism will stick because, they say, “Cameron has done this before!” Ummmm....no, he hasn't. Yes, sci-fi author Harlan Ellison agreed to terms with the producers of The Terminator but that was not because The Terminator plagiarized Ellison's 'Outer Limits' episode. It was because Cameron made a stupid comment to a reporter – maybe jokingly, maybe self-deprecatingly – and said something that was a gross exaggeration. If Harlan Ellison had actually tried to sue James Cameron for plagiarism based on the actual similarities between The Terminator and the content of his Outer Limits episode 'Soldier', I think that the lawsuit probably would've been dismissed at the court's metal detector check-in.

(One other note about the Harlan Ellison incident, and this is just to be totally clear on the matter: there are indeed a few small but explicit similarities between The Terminator and the Outer Limits episode, 'Soldier'. But there are no similarities between The Terminator and the other episode of The Outer Limits written by Ellison, 'Demon with a Glass Hand'. None. Harlan Ellison has never alleged this, and I have yet to find one sane person who can identify any similarities. So the next time one of these petty sci-fi sites wants to bring that story up all over again, get your fucking facts straight. Aren't you guys supposed to be the ones who know everything about science fiction?)

Whatever ends up happening with the latest bogus assault on Avatar and James Cameron, you can be sure of at least this much: it won't be the last attack.

Putting aside the fact that I'm a big fan of him, here's the truth about James Cameron: he is an objectively great man who has done objectively great things. I've always thought that people who do great things should be applauded or else, if you can't find something nice to say about them, ignored. (Actually, this applies to any human being who's honest and who's trying.) But, unlike Bill Gates or Steve Jobs or men like that, Cameron's not a social conformist and he's not politically correct. From what I've read about them, Cameron's actually much more akin to the great men of the industrial age (Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, even Walt Disney to a certain extent) in his philosophies and temperament than to the few contemporary men who've created anything. Cameron's intensely moral and individualistic, but he has zero tolerance for the media, for lies, or for bullshit. Cameron's working methods on the set aren't contrivances to try and construct some persona (the way it is when many others behave eccentrically). He doesn't degrade and dehumanize his employees the way many people in power do....but he just knows more than they do about their own crafts, and so he knows when they're not producing good work. He just expects and demands that the people on his projects work hard to deliver their best work. This should be celebrated, not mocked. (I could cite numerous stories of Hollywood directors maliciously degrading their underlings, and yet the media doesn't slander those directors. So the message is out: if you're an idiot director who makes military propaganda like Michael Bay, you can arbitrarily insult people for no reasons at all and it'll be reported like, “Oh, he's such a man's man!” But if you honestly lose patience with people doing lousy work....you're Satan incarnate.)

Cameron came from a middle class Canadian family that couldn't even afford to send him to college. At 25, he was, basically, a burnout. He smoked a lot of weed, drank a lot of beer, and he had no money. Then, with no connections in Hollywood, no U.S.C. film school education, no buddies at Fox or Universal or the unions, he decided to try and make movies. He didn't expressly want to be a director, he just wanted to create movies. If you had seen James Cameron at that time, in 1978, you might have dismissed him as a socially inept, bearded quasi-hippie going nowhere. A failure. Just another wage-slave machinist who'll probably end up in a trailer park. But you'd have been wrong. With the help of one significant stroke of luck (getting $20,000 investment on a friend's film project), he created a very impressive science fiction short film filled with complex effects shots that he engineered.

From there, after years of labor, Cameron went on to make one revolutionary movie after another. Like a force of nature, he was inventing new cameras (with his brother Mike), pioneering new technologies, writing wonderful stories, revitalizing discarded effects techniques, and on and on and on. Then, going up against more challenges than Hollywood had ever seen in its history plus the sneering cynicism of the American media, he created, through sheer force of will, the most successful motion picture of all time....by a landslide.

Do movie fans recognize what a jaw-dropping achievement Titanic is? If you don't, I encourage you to read old newspaper and magazine articles from the time of its production. It was an orgy of insults. Everybody from the studio execs to the craft services guys were taking shots at him, and the media loved it. Cameron had to drop all of his financial gains from the movie to appease the businessmen.

But then the actual creation came out.

Titanic, on-screen and off, is the single greatest achievement in the history of motion pictures. Again, by a landslide. You might say that that's all a matter of opinion, but I don't think so. No honest person knowledgeable about movies would dispute that.

So why is a man who achieved all this so reviled? Why is it that, time after time after time, the American media launches these stupid, slanderous hit pieces? Is it because they only have room for so much idolatry and they reserve all that for the military? Is it because they don't like it when somebody who's self-educated and an immigrant achieves more than any thousand of these power-class elitists combined? Is it just because they love tearing down men who don't conform to their worldview?

In Canada, James Cameron is all but revered. The Canadian articles about him and the biography written by a Canadian author, they get it. In his hometown of Chippawa, he's celebrated like Charles Lindburgh returning from Paris. Why is it that they can recognize his objectively great achievements but all Americans can do is scoff and sneer?

The CBC ran a feature on James Cameron's
hometown throwing a parade for him: complete with
a band, the town firetruck, and a speech from the mayor.

Personally, my larger problem with this is kind of broad and philosophical. I honestly think that America has completely and totally lost any sort of creative spirit. James Cameron says we're “cowards”. He might be right, but I just think that we're spiritually inert simply because we can't create anything anymore. Worse still, we don't even want to create anymore. Our great heroes are no longer Franklin and Edison and Jonas Salk and Neal Armstrong. Nowadays, our heroes are “our troops” and Sarah Palin and Barack Obama. Bureaucrats! We celebrate government bureaucrats! (Especially those with guns.)

This isn't just weird, it's destructive. It's antithetical to the very idea of civilization and humanity. Maybe I've been wrong my whole life, but I've always just intuitively thought that man is meant to build and to create. Animals just accept their system (nature) and deal with it like bureaucrats. But, like the ape in 2001: A Space Odyssey, man is supposed to look at dumb matter and impose his intelligence upon that. This is called “creation”. Man is supposed to make clubs from bones, fire from wood, paintings from mud, sculptures from clay, steam engines from iron ore, glass from sand....you get the idea.

Maybe I'm wrong, but that's what I've always thought.

And James Cameron embodies the spirit of creation, and he has his whole life. The man practically is creation. If you think I'm overstating it, I encourage you to do your research on everything he's accomplished – not just the hit movies, but everything that went into those movies and what he did between movies and what he did as a teenager and what he did after Titanic. It's hugely inspiring, and a great example of what humans should aspire for - not the celebrity aspect, but the sheer creative force. Yes, he's a human being and, as any of us Christians will tell you, human beings are inherently imperfect, so he undoubtedly has a lot of failings (and no, I'm not just talking about Dark Angel!) But that's assumed. Taken as a whole, the man and his works should be held up and celebrated by America, and they probably would be if this were 1950 or even 1980. But something has happened to us in the past few decades.

Here's a prediction: Avatar will make a disproportionate amount of money in the Eastern countries (Buddhist-, Hindu-, and Muslim-based countries) than it will in America. I think this because I also think that, ironically, the Eastern people are now more American than America is. I can tell you from my own personal experience that it's chilling how much more adventurous and innovative immigrants are than Americans. And because Avatar is an adventurous story by an innovative man, those people will get it.

But, just like they are with James Cameron himself, Americans might be too busy sneering or putting on a tough guy act to recognize something that's great sitting right in front of them.

(Here comes the obligatory “bookend” closing.) At the end of Cameron's Spider-man scriptment, Spider-man rejects the businessman's misanthropic, Darwinian proposal and decides to stand up for the common man. He takes $250 million of the businessman's money and spreads it out across Manhattan like confetti. Soon after, Peter Parker also stands up to a bully at his school and:

From James Cameron's Spider-man Scriptment:
Everybody cheers. Because the truth is: we really do like heroes. Especially when they're underdogs.

James Cameron, like his Spider-man (and Josh Sully) is an underdog hero, so the American response to Avatar and Cameron will reveal a little bit about whether Cameron's optimistic assessment of human nature was right or not.

The Preview for Avatar

2009-10-23T06:20:00.010-04:00

David vs. Goliath.

NOTE: This post will be updated with the higher-res trailers as they become available.

"No one can be told how awesome Avatar looks....you have to see it for yourself."

Avatar: The New Fight Club

2009-10-19T03:11:00.013-04:00

Just as Titanic tapped into primal human feelings of youthful love, Avatar's hero, Jake Sully will tap into the despair of the declining American male.

Some depressing things are happening to me and my fellow American men. In fact, they've been happening for a while. Since 1980, men have been suffering far more unemployment than women, and the trend has rocketed upward in the past few years. Unemployment lines have become sausage-fests. (Ladies, are you looking for a fella' who's really gonna support your career ambitions? You know where to find him!) Men aren't going to college, and the ones that do ain't graduating. If you see a guy strollin' through the quad, he's more likely a townie trying to sell some weed than a student heading to class. And, in the unlikely event that one of us unemployed, uneducated slobs happens to find a girl, we still aren't even fulfilling nature's most primal command to procreate. (Which is probably a good thing, 'cause you can't rock a baby and play Resident Evil 5 at the same time, ya know? Spreading your seed just pales in comparison to boosting your Achievement points.)

And then here's the topper: American mens' testosterone levels have been mysteriously dropping at a systematic rate for 25 years (Shhh! Don't dare say this out loud! You'll be called a "wacko conspiracy theorist" because medical facts are now wacko conspiracy theories.)

Now, your predictable mobs of Power Brokers (ya know, Corporate America, the government, the military), they've been hip to these trends from the start, and they're cleverly exploiting them and finding new ways to exploit them even as you read this. That's why, for example, when you're watching the baseball playoffs, every other commercial is an embarrassing ad telling you what "real men" want:

You also see the exploitation of the declining male in ever-present Pentagon propaganda with their talking point portrayal of morose masculinity. "Hey, American men: you're all sissies", they want you to know. "Real men don't build or create, the only real men are 'our troops'." (And American women eat this one up, big time. Check out the ratings for the Pentagon-sponsored soap opera, Army Wives.) They know full well what the common man can only sense subconsciously: that he's been lied to, assaulted, and diminished. So the corporations and military have been tremendously successful at convincing men that the way to fill the vacuum that is their pride (and their testicles) is through lies, worshiping "the troops" and, of course, guzzling beer and buying Viagra. (God knows that the elites themselves use that disgusting shit!)

(By the way, all of this was astutely forecast - or at least documented in its incubating phase - a full decade ago in the very well-written book Stiffed, by reporter Susan Faludi. And, much more angrily and hilariously, in the irreducibly great movie, Fight Club.)

Anyway, I am actually leading up to a point about Avatar. Now it's just my own little theory, but I'm confident in it. It's this:

I think Jake Sully emotionally encapsulates the plight of the modern American male. He's sexually non-functioning (because he's a cripple), he lives in a decaying civilization, he's got no direction or dreams, his body's been depleted by outside forces, and he's altogether wasting away.

But, beneath all that, Jake still yearns to be whole again (at least I hope this is true of American men, too).

So, when Jake takes his Na'vi form in the AVTR program and feels renewed through his avatar, I think the American male audience (not the phony fanboys, but the common man) will feel vicariously renewed through him. The long-oppressed drive to discover will have an awakening as Jake explores the mysterious, primal environment in Pandora. And as Jake leads the Na'vi in an epic David vs. Goliath battle against the mighty military, I think that those'll be the most exciting battle scenes since Braveheart (as opposed to, like, a one-sided slaughter against third-world peasants, where we're Goliath, eh?) Most of all, when Jake falls in love with Neytiri and earns her love through his courage, I hope that men will feel some vicarious passion just like girls felt vicarious romance in Titanic. (And, just for the record, Cameron has powerfully portrayed romantic love three times now: Titanic and also The Abyss and The Terminator.)

In short, I think that this tale of discovery and love (which stands in direct contrast to the consumption and crudeness that Corporate America is selling or the destruction and servility that the military is selling) is a deep, deep psychological well just waiting to be tapped. And Avatar, I think, should be able to tap that.

It just feels like the time is right for men to at least want to be men again. And Avatar is the perfect pop culture vessel to express this profound yearning to explore, discover, fight real wars, and feel honest passion. Through an avatar.

Avatar: Database of Rare Images

2009-10-12T09:07:00.046-04:00

10-19-09: I'm deleting this post because (a) it's redundant (considering how many other image databases are easily found online) and also because (b) it was a bad idea to begin with: my computer is agonizingly slow, and so dealing with heavy graphics (downloading them, re-sizing, tweaking, outlining them, etc.) is just too frustrating. The job is already being done elsewhere, and it's also being done much more efficiently than I can do it with my hardware.

If you're looking for pictures (heck, if you're looking for anything related to Avatar), I strongly recommend the great site AvatarMovieZone.com. Specifically, I'll refer you to their picture and video catalog HERE.

But if you're looking for a specific Avatar or Cameron picture, let me know and I'll make sure to pass it along to you.

"Signatures of James Cameron" The Complete Mini-Documentary

2009-10-08T15:48:00.009-04:00

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Here's the entire mini-documentary exploring five common threads throughout James Cameron's movies, at least in my opinion. If you enjoy it and you know anybody else who you think would, you could do me a big favor by just taking 60 seconds to e-mail them a link. (Incidentally, if anybody thinks it'd be worthwhile to post an iPhone-playable version, let me know and I'll make the effort to do that, too.)

A quick note on the production quality: this video was made using Windows MovieMaker on a computer with a 1 gHz processor. What that means is (a) the software was extremely limiting (for instance, it couldn't be edited down to the individual frame, just in .07-second increments, and only one audio track at a time could be added, which means that the video had to be re-rendered repeatedly to add other audio tracks, each time degrading the quality resulting in all that blurriness and pixelization) and (b) it took an agonizingly long time to do even basic tasks like, ya know....cutting. Every time I made a cut it took about 10-seconds for it to register. Imagine typing in a word processor and the letters only became visible after 4 minutes: it's frustrating just to imagine, right? I dealt with that frustration for hour after hour. Editing a video on my computer is kind of like trying to play a video game with wool mittens. Or it's like trying to plant spring flowers in a torrential downpour. Or it's like trying to do a Celtic dance in shackles. Or it's like trying to write a clever blog post while music is blaring right next to you.

So I guess what I'm saying is that I acknowledge that the production values are really lousy, but it's the best that could be done with my budget ($0) and equipment. So cut me some slack, okay?

Also, this is my second James Cameron video (the other is The 3rd Writer on The Terminator?) and, despite the suffocating limitations, I really enjoy doing them. If anybody has good ideas for another video (or, for that matter, thoughtful blog post), absolutely feel free to let me know.

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"Signatures of James Cameron" A Documentary, Video 2 of 2

2009-10-05T02:32:00.015-04:00

Below is the second part of a mini-documentary called Signatures of James Cameron. Between the two videos, I listed five distinctive features shared by (most of) Cameron's movies, at least from my point of view.

The fifth "signature", called "The Value of Human Life" might possibly be provoke anger from some people, but I did my best to really substantiate the case and present it in a tempered manner (although, with my argumentative nature, "tempered" is kind of a relative term!) Just for the record, my goal in making the point is not to be political and it is definitely not to generate artificial traffic to the blog by being "provocative" or "edgy". The goal is just to have fun and, I guess, to maybe engender some respect and appreciation for Cameron's works (as if he needs my help!) Anyway, I identified and thought about all these things years ago, and any of my brothers or high school classmates would confirm that I was babbling on about each of these items back in 1996, and I obviously wasn't trying to promote any blog at those times.

As always, please don't be shy about leaving comments or asking questions, and also please send links to any acquaintances who might have an interest.

Fanboys = Grumpy Old Men (Really)

2009-09-05T11:17:00.036-04:00

The "fanboy" community reacted to the Avatar preview with sneering dismissal. Does it actually look bad, or are the "fans" themselves at fault?

"Dementia slowly loosens the sufferer's grip on those unique tokens of humanity, words. An early sign is a forgetfulness that results in repetitiveness, and fixation on the distant past."

-Columnist George Will [Emphasis added.]

James Cameron was confident that premiering footage of Avatar at the 2009 San Diego Comic-Con was the surest way to start off on the right foot. "My peeps", is what Cameron called the self-proclaimed "geeks" and "fanboys" at the pop culture show. (The event's title is a misnomer: it isn't really a comic book convention at all, but actually kind of a series of commercials for movies and TV shows where fans actually pay to watch the commercials.) Fox's and Cameron's marketing plan for Avatar was pretty much the same plan that every other Hollywood producer at the show had: show the fanboys some clips of the movie, then have the cast and crew talk at the audience for a half hour or so, and then just sit back and watch as all of them scurry off to the message boards and their blogs to "evangelize" for the movie studio.

And Cameron and the financiers had every reason to be confident in this strategy. After all, James Cameron has written and directed six movies, and all six were well-received critically, and five of them were outright smash hits both at the box office and in the after-markets.

And yet, despite the screening being the most media-hyped showing at all of Comic-Con, there was still one major reason to be anxious: Avatar is an original creative endeavor.

Logically, this would seem like a selling-point, not a drawback. Why would moviegoers want one of the greatest moviemakers copying stories and characters from previous moviemakers? That would be like wanting Albert Pujols to force himself to play like an inferior baseball player. Or it would be like wasting Burt Rutan's aeronautical engineering skills on building a duplicate of the Kitty Hawk. It just wouldn't make any sense at all.

But the fact remained that, in recent years, America's supposed science fiction fans have been much more interested in rehashing old stories and franchises (X-Men, Spider-Man, 300, Iron Man, Transformers, Watchmen, G.I. Joe, The Dark Knight, etc., etc., etc.) than in hearing new stories.

But Cameron was determined to make Avatar's originality a selling point, regardless of the fans' palpable desire for re-treads. "We have no brand value. We have to create that brand value." He told the L.A. Times. "We’ve had these big, money-making franchise films for a long time, Star Trek and Star Wars, you know, Harry Potter, and there’s a certain sort of comfort factor in that; you know what you’re going to get. But there’s no kind of shock of the new that’s possible with that. It’s been a while since something that took us on a journey, something that grabbed us by the lapels and dragged us out the door and took us on a journey of surprise."

His sentiment should've been cause for exuberance from his "peeps". A relentlessly pioneering filmmaker is telling a story with aliens, space ships, an insurrection against a mighty military, and, once again, creating bleeding-edge special effects.

But none of it mattered. The fans didn't want to embrace the new, they wanted to lapse back into the old. Here's The Hollywood Reporter's account of the reaction Avatar received from its supposed "fans":

"But while the 6,500 members of the audience were wowed, the reaction was not the hysterical level seen in the “New Moon” or “Alice in Wonderland” panels."

Assume that's true, and then consider it for just a minute: the maker of the most successful movie of all time - by both a colossal margin and by every conceivable metric (Oscars, American business, foreign business, etc.) - is making a brand-new science fiction extravaganza....and yet the supposed fans of science fiction were more interested in New Moon, a sequel to a movie based off of a fad teen vampires franchise.

That, on its face, is a completely bizarre, mind-boggling occurrence. It would be as if people had the choice to watch the Space Shuttle launch or to watch a Ford Escort start up, and they all chose the Ford Escort.

But, hey, it was just one day and so maybe it was just a random anomaly, eh?

Unfortunately, no. About a month later, on August 20th, the two-minute trailer premiered online: the collective response to Avatar's trailer was unmitigated disdain. Now, obviously, whether somebody is entertained by something is totally subjective. But, speaking as a longtime fan of science fiction and James Cameron, I thought the preview was downright awesome. And even if my reaction was just bias or anomalously favorable, I still can't seriously believe that masses of people - self-proclaimed sci-fi fans, no less! - could honestly think it made the movie look bad. After all, movie previews, even for bad movies, are almost always cool in and of themselves.

But you can't argue with the facts. Here are a few representative quotes from notable "fanboy" sites:

CHUD.com

Headline: "'AVATAR' VIDEO GAME LOOKS BETTER THAN THE FILM."

"But there's one thing we can all agree on- that trailer wasn't very good."

AintItCoolNews.com:

"Truthfully, I was roundly underwhelmed by the standard trailer released on the Internet."

"Yesterday's standard trailer appears to have underwhelmed many."

CinemaBlend.com:

The 'Avatar' Trailer Sucks, But Don't Give Up Hope.

And those are the website's official writers, most of whom are usually shameless sycophants (probably in hopes of earning tributes from the companies). If you look over the messageboards of those sites (and many others) and you'll find a virtual orgy of mocking venom at Avatar:

"It looks like crap. "A deeply felt, mythic story?" Try Humans vs. Blue Elves in space with the same eco-themes Hollywood always delights in shoving down our throats. Looks like a World of Warcraft rip-ooff crossed with a standard Hollywood anti-war flick. Pass."

"Avatar = Butt mud"And then there were all those "clever" pop culture reference jabs:

And then this video, which has gotten well over 200,000 views.

However over-hyped the movie (and, therefore, its previews) might be, however imperfect the trailer might've been, whatever promises of a "revolution" were impossible for Fox to keep, there was still absolutely no localized explanation for this response. The only explanation has to lie outside of Avatar itself.

Let's go back to this post's opening quote: "An early sign [of dementia] is a forgetfulness that results in repetitiveness, and fixation on the distant past."

Today's movie "fanboys" exhibit every one of those signs. I decided to research and quantify this. So, with the help of BoxOfficeMojo.com, I went back to 1980 (the earliest that their database chronicles) and looked for patterns in Hollywood blockbusters.

The results of the research were chilling:

Before the turn of the millennium, one quarter of Hollywood blockbusters were retreads (this includes sequels and movies based off of well-known comic books, video games, TV shows, or contemporaneously popular books). Since 2000, that number has almost tripled to 71%.

Like the poor old woman in a nursing home who thinks that her long-dead husband is just out taking their child fishing, the young men who Cameron calls his "peeps" simply are stuck in the past. More importantly for Avatar's business, they also can't embrace the new....they're incapable of wrapping their decaying brains around the ideas in Avatar. They don't want, nor can they handle, challenging new ideas and dynamic new stories, they want, well, G.I. Joe. And X-Men: Origins: Wolverine. And....this.

Scroll through the "fanboy" sites and better than half of what you'll hear about are pre-existing franchises. The day I had the idea for this column, I went to AintItCoolNews. Here's a screencap of their site:

Out of 10 movies they're featuring, four of them are franchises (and note that two of the other six were only featured because the editors had interviews with the movies' stars.)

But this phenomenon extends beyond movies....it's everywhere. You see it out in public where 30-something men wear Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle t-shirts (did middle-aged men in the 1980's wear t-shirts of The Lone Ranger? I sure as hell never saw it as a kid.) You see it on every TV show and in every magazine with the ubiquitous "Top 10" lists where modern Americans' self-referential naval-gazing is agonizingly played out. Tragically, you also see it in universities and in corporations, where Americans simply can't build or create anything anymore, and so instead of engineers, architects, and scientists, you instead have a generation of marketers, military troops, cops, and other government bureaucrats who create nothing at all.

What's the cause of all this? Who knows. It's very possible that this downright creepy, horrifying trend is partially responsible. But this premature dementia is a sweeping problem across all of the West, and so I don't think that there's one simple explanation.

James Cameron (American by marriage, Canadian by birth) is an exception to this collective mental atrophy. All you need to do is read any interview with him and you'll quickly realize two things: the man has an innate spirit for innovation and creation, and he's a true genius. This is why he made Avatar: because he's not suffering from the same premature Alzheimers or dementia that his peeps at AintItCool.com and the San Diego Comic-Con are. Just the opposite!

For instance, here's what he wrote about not being involved in the Terminator franchise:

"I kind of turned my back on the Terminator world when there was early talk about a third film. I'd evolved beyond it." [Emphasis added.]

(Incidentally, he didn't mention here, but he has mentioned elsewhere, that Terminator 1 and 2 form an entirely enclosed, complete tale. Just contemplating the movies for two minutes, it's clear to anybody with half a brain that the story was complete after the second movie. Watertight. But that wasn't going to stop the fanboys from pummeling hundreds of millions of dollars into the dogs--- TV show or moronic sequels: what else were they going to do, take the effort to learn a new story?!? Get real! Now pardon Fanboy while he rushes off to watch U.S. military propaganda Transformers 2.)

This might sound like a dour, pessimistic analysis, and I guess that it is. But Cameron's an optimist (hell, he spent the better part of this decade trying to inspire modern Americans to explore and innovate - now that's optimism!), and he's swept Fox up into his optimism (and, ya know, they owe him one, anyway, eh?)

But this whole debacle with the trailer and with Avatar Day should at least teach them that they need to widen their net, because Fanboy doesn't want an imaginative story, and he can't even understand it, anyway. Fanboy wants self-referential pop culture. He wants retreads from his childhood and endless references to it in movies like Superbad and TV shows like 'Family Guy'. That's all his decaying brain can comprehend.

Despite all this, I do think that, somewhere deep inside of our poisoned, corrupted, and propagandized souls, Americans do still have some latent spirit. After 9/11, the media, military, and politicians cynically stoked our egos by telling us all that America was a "sleeping giant that had been awoken". But actually, I think that 9/11 (and the government and media's twisted hall of evil and lies all around it) really put us to sleep, in a certain sense. And this theory is definitely supported by the box office trend that started right around the time of 9/11. Yeah, Hollywood is the one producing them the first place, but it's the people who choose to spend money on this regurgitated crap, time after time.

But, even though it's buried beneath our lies and shame and God-knows-what-else, I think an adventurous spirit is still there. I think that Americans, deep down, do still want to, as Cameron says, "push outward". But if this is true, it's a trait of the race collectively, of all of us, not of some wannabe "geeks" at Comic-Con or AintItCoolNews.

And so, insofar as Avatar's business is concerned, I think that the movie would be best served by trying to interest the common man in it, not Fanboy. Fanboy's proven himself already. Common man might have lost his job at the factory, he might not have 400 Blu-Ray discs, and he might not spend his spare time at AintItCoolNews, but he's the one who's yearning for adventure. He's the one looking to "push outward". He's the one who wants to hear stories like Avatar.

I might be wrong but, hey, it couldn't be any worse than what happened August 21st, could it?

Avatar's Evolution

2009-09-01T03:30:00.066-04:00

The Avatar scriptment was written in 1996. This post details the known changes from that scriptment to the shooting script.

-James Cameron
in an interview with the L.A. Times.

The script for Avatar is definitely epic and, reading it, anybody familiar with standard Hollywood consolidating and editing practices can spot several elements that probably wouldn't make it into the final movie. Here is a list of changes - some big, but mostly small - that I know have been made from the 1996 scriptment. (Note: This post will be continuously updated as more info about the finished movie becomes public. As always, feel free to e-mail or comment with tips or ideas.)

Update: 9-2-09. "RIP, Medusa & Slinger". Courtesy of 'Furious from Avatar Movie Zone'.

Update: 9-9-09. "Grace Augustine's Promotion". Courtesy of 'AintItCoolNews.com (2007)'.

Update: 9-19-09. The massive predators called "Manticores" in the script are called "Thanators" in the movie. From AvatarMovieZone.com, referencing Empire Magazine.

Update: 10-11-09. Norm & Trudy: Opposites Attract. From AintItCool.com (2007).

Update: 10-29-09. AMP Suits: Name & Interface Change.

Update: 10-29-09. ~~Josh~~ Sully is no more. Arise, "Jake" Sully.

#1: Chronological Setting.
The scriptment took place in 2100 A.D., whereas the movie is set "200 years in the future", so around 2200 A.D. I'm unaware of why this change was made.

#2: Josh Sully is no more. Arise, "Jake" Sully.
The very first words in the scriptment are "Welcome to JOSH SULLY'S world." [Cameron's emphasis.]

Irate at some knucklehead who can't remember his name,
Jake angrily rolls out and prematurely ends his night on the town.

The very first word's in the preview are, "Are you JAKE SULLY? [My emphasis.]

I'm guessing that the name-change occurred because there was either an existing prominent fictional character with that name (although I don't know any) or else because there's a prominent real-life person with that name. They actually changed the name of one of the murderers in the James Cameron written-and-produced movie Strange Days for the latter reason, and I recall a few other instances, too, including the main character in Wall Street. So this isn't really anything unusual at all. (I have to admit....I feel like a sleepy-headed dolt for not catching this one sooner. I'm not normally so unobservant, I swear!)

#2: (Sorta) Clean-shaven ~~Josh~~ Jake.
Just a minor change, but this is how human Josh is described (before joining the Avatar Program) in the script: "Josh still wears his army jacket, and with his unkempt beard and hair, and surly eyes, he is pretty much ignored by the crowds which buffet him like surf. Just another angry vet, a piece of discarded human trash." Contrast that with this:

#3: Pandora vegetation is now green, not purple.
The script describes Pandora's foliage and vegetation thusly: "Just as the plants on Earth are green with chlorophyl, the plants of Pandora, based on a different biochemistry, are mostly purple. The tones range from purple-blue, through violet to magenta."

But, it's clear from every photo and clip from the movie that this is no longer the case. Here's a screencap of the "Montes Volans", or flying mountains:

#4: Grace ~~Shipley's~~ Augustine's Promotion.
Grace, in the screenplay, is a "xenobotanist" (although scientists who study the nature of hypothetical extraterrestrial life are called astrobiologists, rather than xenobiologoists, so you'd think it'd extent to botanists, but that's definitely just meaningless semantics) who actually butts heads with Brantley Giese, who's the head of the entire Avatar program. Grace thinks he's too deferential to SECFOR (the military) and doesn't stand up for the program enough.

Now, Giese has been fired and Grace runs the show, so there's no more cause for complaining! In a 2007 interview with AintItCoolNews.com, Cameron said, "Grace....in the new script she runs the Avatar program."

Now, Cameron has said that Avatar is not an attempt at futurism, but is instead a commentary on present-day humankind (which is good, 'cause most of the time those futurists are hilariously wrong). But Grace's professional upgrade does represent a current sociological trend in the West. I'm sure it's totally a coincidence, but that's just something I thought about.

As far as the name change goes, it's definitely trivial (I doubt that the last name is spoken more than once in the actual movie), but I'd guess that the reason for it is because "Augustine" just has a more authoritative ring to it than "Shipley" does.

(Updated update, 10-2-09. In the aforementioned Empire magazine article, Sigourney Weaver points out that the character's name was changed because it was too obvious a connection to Aliens. "Ripley" and "Shipley" rhyme, obviously, and my inability to pick up on this earlier is still more proof that I have no rhythm.)

#5: The "link" chamber is now an enclosed bed, not a chair.
In the script, the controllers reside in an upright chair when they're interfacing with their avatars. This is how it's described: "Here we see the veteran controllers in a long row of what look like high-tech dental chairs. They have the link gear over their heads, and are tied into the distant bodies of their respective avatars. They seem to be sleeping, or in a trance state."

But here, in the background, are the resting chambers for the controllers in the actual movie:

There are a few obvious reasons for this change. First off, it simply makes a lot more sense for the human controllers to be lying horizontally because it wouldn't require any muscle activity at all, and blood would reach their heads with less effort from their hearts. Another reason is because of the original interface's similarity to the comparable units in The Matrix. When the "unplugged" humans jack into the Matrix, their terrestrial bodies rest in a manner nearly identical to what was originally written for Avatar. (Note that both stories were written at about the same time, so (relax, phony fanboys) I don't think that this trivial similarity was a case of one writer insidiously trying to steal from another.)

#6: The massive predators called "Manticores" in the script are called "Thanators" in the movie.
Like the other name changes, this is really trivial, but I thought I'd post it anyway. The thanators appear to be exactly the same in the movie as the script, except for the name alone. Here's a picture of the toy, from Empire Magazine, proving the change:

#7: RIP, Medusa & Slinger.
At the Avatar Movie Zone forums, a poster called "Furious" provided this tip from Empire magazine. Medusas and slingers are two wild Pandoran creatures that got a lot of attention in the scriptment, but are now gone (although it wouldn't be surprising to see them reborn in a sequel or the videogame or other media).

The slinger was a predator which had a detachable head that acted like a guided dart. It was kind of hard to understand, but the script said that the detachable head and the body were actually mother and child. I don't think this omission (or alteration) is very noteworthy. On the other hand....

....The omission of the medusa necessitates a significant change in the story's sequence of events, and, in my opinion, it also reduces Pandora's exoticism, if just a little. Medusas are giant, floating jellyfish-like creatures with a "curtain" of tentacles that reach down and grab prey from the Montes Volans (flying mountains). Their tentacles also electrically shock their prey (although apparently not with much effectiveness, as when Josh is grabbed by one, he retains full awareness and motor control). The tentacles then reel them into the mouth at the base of the sac for consumption. The sac itself is filled with hydrogen, so if a firearm is shot at it, they'll explode like a zeppelin.

Although the medusas might sound sort of clumsy and dumb (and the script described them as such), I thought they were a cool contrast to the rest of the Pandoran wildlife, which is almost always described as lean and cunning. The medusa added some aesthetic breadth to the too-cool Pandoran jungles, and so that's why I said that I think the reduce Pandora's exoticism.

But more importantly, the medusa played a key role in the actual story. When Josh and Grace are up at Site 26 (a secondary location, one located in the Montes Volans, where controllers can connect to their avatars), a medusa's slimy tenticles grab Josh. Although he's able to survive (obviously), he is then separated from all the humans on Pandora, and that's how he gets to meet Zuleika (now named "Neytiri") and the Na'vi clan, and to begin to sense the hidden logic of Pandora.

Based upon this photo....:

....I'm guessing that what happens instead is that the Samson (the Huey-helicopter like transports that the humans use for most travels) is simply attacked by a leonopteryx (which it was, in the scriptment, while Josh was snatched by the medusa) and that the three of them are then somehow split up on the ground. I'm not sure, obviously, but that's my guess.

#8: The Na'vi now have jointed fingers.
Here's the scriptment's description of the Na'vi hands: "The hands are graceful, with three very long fingers, and one opposed thumb. The fingers curve smoothly, bending without joints. This sounds off-putting, but it is really quite beautiful."

But now, the preview shows very clearly that they do have jointed fingers. This change was probably made for reasons of plausibility. Without skeletal structure in their hands, the Na'vi would have to have hands with more mass than lead and muscles stronger than a Porsche's engine to hang onto the animals that they queue, to pull a bow-string, or to whip their bolas around over their head. Also, the fingers would look serpentine sans joints, and the last thing that Fox would want with a $200m investment is for the audience to be creeped out by the protagonists!

#9: The "powersuits" are now called AMP (Armored Mobility Platform) suits; no longer controlled via psyonic link.
Since it's capitalized, "AMP" is obviously an acronym for something, but it's a good bet that it's a totally contrived grouping of words that'd allow for the cool-sounding "AMP" word. But this is very realistic. I mean, do any government or military acronyms ever make sense?

Plus, in the scriptment, "Quaritch uses a psionic link to control the machine," just like the link used to control the Na'vi avatars. Thematically, this was kinda cool 'cause it shows very dichotomous uses of this potent telepresence technology. But, logically, it doesn't totally make sense because then the troops would probably never risk their lives by leaving the base if they could simply control their AMP suits remotely. (Furthermore, controlling the avatar in the link is portrayed as very complex, and so how that delicate, sophisticated technology could be transferred to this war machine - with the controller being jerked around in combat - is hard to fathom.)

But as you can see:

AMP suits are now controlled physically, more-or-less mirroring the user's body actions. This image of Lyle Wainfleet was selected 'cause it's really cool. But the preview makes it even clearer when Quaritch's AMP suit responds to his arm movements (and you can hear the servo motors whizzing away) very clearly.

#10: Norm ~~Cheeseman~~ Spellman - in both human and Na'vi form - is now a primary character.
In the script, Cheeseman is probably the third-most referenced controller (tied with Hegner, although we never even get to Hegner's avatar body because he had killed it after the troops murdered his Na'vi girlfriend), yet he's still a fringe character in the scriptment. But it's becoming clear that Cheeseman (who's been renamed Norm Spellman for the movie) is now a major player in the final script.

We know this because: (a) screencaps from Empire magazine show that he's involved in scenes that he wasn't involved with in the scriptment, and (b) he actually shares screentime with Josh at key moments:

Upgrading ~~Cheeseman~~ Spellman from a minor to a major character was probably a decision made because the actor who plays Norm Spellman, Joel Moore, is very charismatic, and it's unlikely that such a commanding screen presence wouldn't be utilized as much as possible (I only saw him in Art School Confidential, but he was hilarious and almost definitely the character that the audience most liked). Furthermore, Avatar's story is indeed epic, and it's also rife with political and sociological subtext. So I'd be willing to bet that Cameron was advised to offer some comic relief to allow the audience to periodically unburden themselves. Norm Spellman's character provides a great opportunity for that much-needed levity.

#11: Trudy Chacon & Norm Spellman: Opposites Attract.
For those who find Michelle Rodriguez attractive (as opposed to kind of sad and desperate-looking), you can vicariously romance her through the personage of scientist and AVTR member Norm Spellman. In a 2007 interview with AintItCoolNews.com, the (in my opinion) very engaging actor Joel Moore tells the site, "I have a girlfriend in this and it's....Michelle Rodriguez and she’s hot."

Like the increased focus on the character of Norm, this is an addition to the scriptment's material, not an alteration. It's very possible that this will be something implied, not really warranting its own scenes because Sam Worthington is in every scene. So this means that there can't be scenes where the geek scientist and the amazon soldier sneak off to Hab-mod for a forbidden rendezvous.

Trudy lustfully gazes at the unsuspecting
object of her lecherous affections.

#12: The Tsumongwi (the Na'vi tribe) princess is now named "Neytiri" rather than "Zuleika".
I don't know why this change was made (maybe they didn't like that Zuleika phonetically begins with "zoo"?), and I don't think it matters much at all, but there it is.

#13: Na'vi have to prove dominance to animal before queue-ing?
I read in several of the synopses of the 15-minute preview for Avatar that, before Jake mounts and queues his bansheeray (or, possibly, leonopteryx), he first has to, somehow, establish his superiority to the animal before making it his beast of burden. (Unfortunately, I couldn't track down any of the repeated sources that mentioned this, and so I'm not positive about it.) This might well explain this shot from the preview:

#14: When Jake is first stranded in the jungle, the manticore chases him.
This is definitely a minor change, but in the scriptment, when Jake is first deserted out in the Pandoran wilds, he's threatened by a titanothere (basically a massive rhino-like creature with the noggin of a hammerhead shark; it's herbivorous, but territorial), and he's actually saved when a manticore (a massive carnivore that looks like it "could eat a T-Rex and have the Alien for desert") leaps in to attack that titanothere. (It's kinda funny how it describes Jake quietly backing away from the feasting manticore and then, when he's reached a comfortable distance stealthily, he runs like hell.) In the scriptment, Jake's test of courage in the wild comes a bit later, when he's attacked by a pack of viperwolves. (Self-promotion: The viperwolf attack is sorta like an event in my sci-fi novel!)

Incidentally, if, in the final movie, Jake is attacked by both the manticore and the viperwolves, then that will suggest that the Pandoran wild is incredibly lethal, which would diminish the revelation that came at the end of the script. In that version, it was revealed that much of the ferocity and carnage the humans endured from the Pandoran wild was the result of the "Gaia"-like planet diagnosing Hell's Gate (the human colony) as a cancer, and so it sent its "cells" (animals and plants) to attack it. But if Jake can't catch his breath even a far distance away from Hell's Gate, you can assume that the entire planet is as savage as the area around Hell's Gate.

#15: Trudy Chacon dies.
In the scriptment, Trudy Chacon (who's played by Michelle Rodriguez in the movie) is the lone soldier who comes across as noble. She helps Josh and Grace flee Hell's Gate (the human colony) so they can continue to live as Na'vi after the program has been shut down. (This would, of course, be an act of treason, but Cameron has never defined right and wrong by how institutions like the military tell him to, but by a more heartfelt, individualistic code.)

This was reported by MarketSaw. There's a possibility for a very funny death. During the scriptment's final battle (the Battle of the Big Rock Candy Mountain), she's actually flying her little Samson (a small Huey-type craft) around right in the midst of this colossal battle so that a reporter can film the battle. As I was reading it, I remember thinking, "How the hell would the Na'vi know that she's a good guy? Wouldn't they just attack her, too?" I doubt that she actually dies in a stupid little case of mistaken identity, but it'd be funny (though horribly sad, too) if she did.

-------

So! That's the list of definite or nearly-definite changes. Reading the script, there are a whole slew of other changes that will probably be made, but that I can't verify.

For example, when the avatar link's functionality is first being explained to Jake, he's told that the receiver in his avatar's brain also doubles as a GPS-type locating device, thereby allowing the troops to track him. However, later on in the story, Jake is essentially a fugitive from the troops, and all they'd really have to do is track him by using the locating system embedded in his avatar's brain. So, I'm almost positive that this was altered. (I'm guessing that, in the final script, the avatar link is actually made via satellite, which would allow them to both omit the secondary link location, "Site 26", and also to cover up this plot hole.)

Another obvious change is the elimination of some of the secondary characters. Rob Parrish, the EPA-type regulator at the colony (who's, of course, actually just another corporate lackey on the take, albeit one who dresses like a sensitive "green"-type dude), seems extraneous. And then there's a reporter (whose actually censored by the corporation) named Marcia De Los Santos, who also seems ripe for deletion (and possibly composited with Trudy Chacon). (Interestingly, the scriptment - written around '96, remember - specifies that, as she videotapes Pandora, De Los Santos uses a stereocam. Apparently, Cameron has been fixated on 3D since around the time he made T2: 3D!)

The 3rd Writer on 'The Terminator'? Documentary

2009-08-29T20:57:00.010-04:00

This 5-minute documentary tells the story of Harlan Ellison's lawsuit against Hemdale, the studio that financed The Terminator. I thought it was worth the effort because (a) it's kind of an interesting little tale, in its own humble way, and (b) it has only been documented in one place, as far as I know, and that's in Marc Shapiro's biography of Cameron. (For the record, that biography is, honestly, kinda lousy: there are a number of material facts that are wrong, and its overall tone is petty and critical.)

If you have any questions or comments, let me know in the comments section.

UPDATE: After I made the video, YouTube's association algorithm identified this similar video - it's essentially the same story (and here I thought that I was first!) The primary difference is that this video claims (unconvincingly, in my opinion) that The Terminator was also directly influenced by (or outright plagiarized) another Harlan Ellison episode of The Outer Limits, Demon with a Glass Hand. I haven't seen the episode, so take my thoughts with a grain of salt: Harlan Ellison only mentioned Soldier when he was interviewed by Marc Shaprio, and the "similarities" to The Terminator that the afore-linked-to video mentions are completely unconvincing. The similarities in Soldier are one thing, but if the stuff in Demon's supposed analogy to The Terminator is worthy of the word "plagiarism", then God only knows how much money Cameron could sue Michael Bay and Disney for for the definite similarities between The Abyss and his two P.O.S.'s Armageddon and The Rock (Ed Harris watching guys die through a sealed porthole, oil riggers enlisted by the military, a man communicating to his loved ones through telemetry as he sacrifices himself, etc., etc., etc., etc.)

"Signatures of James Cameron" A Documentary, Video 1 of 2

2009-08-27T08:35:00.011-04:00

This is the first of many documentaries and features JamesCameron.Blogspot.com will be delivering, especially amidst the excitement for Avatar.

Technically, this is just the first half of the first James Cameron documentary, Signatures of James Cameron. It's about the common features and themes shared by most or all of Cameron's features. There are five "signatures" that I singled out, and the first three of them are detailed in this video:

A few notes:

1) The reason for the suspect production values is mostly due to technical restrictions on my end. Although proficient with professional editing software, all I have on my home PC is (and I'm partially embarrassed about this, but also proud I was able to do so much with so little) Windows MovieMaker. Further, my PC only has a 1gHz processor, which means that each and every cut took between 3 to 10 seconds just to register. This made for an agonizingly tedious task, and it also effectively prohibited me from having the time to fix every small flaw, or else I'd still be waiting as my PC stumbled over itself.

2) Please feel free to post any substantive thoughts here in the "Comments" section, especially if you were going to post a comment at the YouTube page, anyway. I'm still waiting for somebody to break the ice!

Defining "Action" Downward

2009-08-22T23:49:00.017-04:00

UPDATE: Note that there's an update beneath this post. It's good news!

An Unnerving Statement from Roger Ebert regarding Avatar's action scenes.

Just a quick post here; but it's critical.

Most people would agree that James Cameron's movies consistently have top-notch action scenes.

All of the action scenes in them elicited exactly what they were intended to. The battle scenes in Aliens are chaotic and terrifying. In Terminator 2, they're riveting and compelling. (There are probably more appropriate superlatives, but I'm sure that you understand my point.)

But for all the great craftsmanship of the stunt coordinators and effects crews, here is why I think Cameron's action scenes are ultimately so exciting: they're always logically valid. Unlike pretty much every action movie since 1996 or so, single incident that occurs in those movies - every reloading of a gun, every explosion, and every melodramatic bellow - made sense and was coherent.

For instance, remember the first battle sequence in Aliens (in the atmosphere processing station). Even amidst all the terror and fright, for each effect there's a cause. Yes, there are a lot of quick cuts and aggressive pans and tilts, but, whether it's subconscious or not, you still always follow that cause-and-effect activity.

It's funny, but as overwhelming and relentless as Aliens is, it's actually only that effective because everything makes sense. Many people might describe Aliens as chaotic (or some variant thereof) but what they mean to say is that it taxed them emotionally and intellectually.

In point of fact, a good action movie is never truly chaotic because psychology tests have demonstrated that when a puzzle is truly random, people simply stop paying it attention (in the case of a movie, people will stop paying attention to the story, and instead just focus on the cool imagery, a'la Transformers, which I think most people would agree is completely illogical, but, admittedly, looks very cool). So, there's no way that Aliens can actually be "chaotic".

Just as a good roller-coaster excites you because it constantly threatens to be dangerous but never actually is, many good action movies work because they constantly threaten to be overwhelming, but they never actually are.

But in contemporary action movies (Mission: Impossible 2 and 3, all of the Michael Bay movies....hell, pretty much everything!), logic doesn't exist, only melodrama and completely unearned "spectacle". In action pictures of the past decade, (a) there's not much logic to what the hell is happening, and (b) even if there were, the cuts and camera moves are so incoherent that we wouldn't be able to follow the logic even if it existed in the first place.

James Cameron's action movies are the complete and total antithesis of this trend, probably because of his background in science and engineering.

(To make an analogy, it's kind of like the difference between hard sci-fi and Hollywood sci-fi. Hard sci-fi works hard to have its feet on the ground. Thus, when it engenders wonder or presents a fascinating scenario, it's exciting and it's earned.)

But all the crappy action movies, at the end of the day, that's understandable. If the market rewards manifestly stupid, vacuous movies than, well, we're all capitalists here, right?

But I hope to God that James Cameron doesn't reduce himself to the level of these movies. And you know what? I didn't think for a second that he ever would. He's made six movies, all of them have had action, and all of them have had logic in both the narrative and the action scenes themselves. That's a hell of a track record, who the hell would ever expect him to change?

But, then, I read Roger Ebert's review of the Avatar preview (which I haven't seen):

"Cameron does, however, make the mistake common in recent action pictures, of cutting the action so quickly its placement in time and space is unclear. Much of the footage of Sully fighting the creatures is so close to the front of the picture and so rapidly cut that we never visually understand quite where Sully is in relationship to the position of the monster seemingly prepared to overwhelm him."

Oh God, no. If James Cameron has been infected with Inane Action Movie Syndrome....then there's little hope. We'll probably never get a good one, ever.

However, this is most likely an attribute of the preview's footage, not of the movie itself. I think.

Listen to the director's commentary on the Terminator 2: Extreme DVD. During the scene where the liquid nitrogen truck is skidding towards the foundry, Cameron talks about how today's action sequences are needlessly disorienting, rarely providing spatial frames of reference for the audience.

He was completely right! But has he now reduced himself to schlock action scenes? God, I hope not. If anybody scores an interview with my man, please bring this up. The movie's still four months from release, and, if he did make some concessions to cynical marketing gurus who told him to make his movie incoherent, there's still time for Avatar to be re-cut in a more logical manner.

-------

UPDATE (Sunday, 8-23-09, 12:30 EST): I've been getting news and reviews from a Chicago-based projectionist named Mike who's very knowledgeable about movies. He was actually at the very same screening as Roger Ebert, and he told me before Ebert wrote about it that Ebert watched it twice, which I mistakenly assumed was because he was so enthralled with the preview.

Anyway, this is what Mike e-mailed me regarding his impression of the action in 'Avatar':

I don't agree with Ebert's criticism of the the action. I didn't have any trouble telling what was going on. Sure, some parts are a bit chaotic, but it's not like we're talking about THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT or anything like that.

I think that if there was a problem, it may have been that the point of convergence changed a bit more rapidly than I was suspecting at times. This can be a bit jarring if your eyes don't adapt as quickly as they should. Honestly, I was surprised by this problem, because Cameron wrote an article for some video magazine about a year and a half ago where he addressed this issue in detail, and presented a solution that made total sense. So why are we having this problem now?

For me, because I was very satisfied with the 3D in Beowulf, I've stopped following the 3D hype so closely and just assumed that that will be, at the worst, a plus for the theatrical presentation. So I can't really speak to that part of his comment.

But, assuming that Mike is correct about the action, Roger Ebert's impression of the action might well just be an aberration. Ebert was the first person to mention the problem, so it probably was just an anomalous sense (although, really, very few critics or film buffs seem all that aware of the Inane Action Phenomenon of the past 15 years - not coincidentally when non-linear editing became standard - and so it's also possible that those viewers have grown so accustomed to senseless action scenes that they're not even aware of it in the way that Ebert and I are.)

Avatar Won't Pay Your Rent

2009-08-21T12:30:00.013-04:00

"It's just a movie. It's not going to come off the screen and give you a hug."

-Richard Roeper responding to hype for The Matrix Reloaded.

Richard Roeper, to me, seems disingenuous, snobby, and kinda dumb, so I hate to have to quote him. But the idea he expressed was deadly accurate. And as much as it applied to The Phantom Menace, the Matrix sequels, the Pirates of the Carribean sequels, The Dark Knight, and a whole slew of other movies in today's wannabe-fanboy meta-media, it applies at least as much to Avatar.

The reason that I'm writing this is because I read the following quote at AintItCool.com today:

"Yesterday's standard trailer [of 'Avatar'] appears to have underwhelmed many."

I'm excited as can be for Avatar, and I thought the preview was awesome. But maybe the fanboys are right and it was actually lame, and I'm simply too bias to notice.

Maybe, but I don't think so. What I think actually happened is that the "fanboys" (a label that, as far as I can tell, is self-ascribed to trend-followers who suck-up to whatever's hip and who think that their momentary, fad-driven opinions have some Biblical significance) actually believed their own bullsh-- hype (plus they believed some from Fox and even from my man himself). They thought that a movie preview was going to pay their rent, cure their illness, or get them a job at Google.

It won't.

My hope for a James Cameron movie is that it'll inflame my imagination, metaphorically transport me out of my present life, and entertain me for a few hours.

But wait! The fanboys have contrived an excuse for why they're "underwhelmed"....

"....[Viewers] who've seen Cameron's ComicCon presentation of footage say you have to experience this presented on a big screen....and in 3D....to truly appreciate its quality, scope, and impact."

Ummm....no, you don't. If the movie looks like it's cool in 3D, and it looks like it's bad in 2D, then that means that the movie itself is bad, and only the 3D is good. Are these people claiming that James Cameron has been reduced to making technical demonstrations?

I think the trailer is awesome. And, if they weren't a cult of hive-minded phonies, I suspect that the "fanboys" would, too. (Although, make no mistake: there will inevitably be some people who genuinely won't like the movie; millions of different human beings will watch it!)

So, unless I'm just bias or have weird taste, what has actually happened here is that the moronic "fanboy" meta-culture has once again distorted their own sense of reality, resulting in ridiculously overblown expectations. They weren't victims of viewing it on QuickTime, they were victims of their own idiocy.

Maybe this is a good thing, eh? Perhaps the "fanboys" will yet again decree that James Cameron is no longer hip and cool, and they'll leave Avatar to the true fans....and to the common man. If this happens, the movie will open modestly. Perhaps with around $60 or $70 million. But then, the lumberjacks and the waitresses and the plumbers who see it - none of whom ever go to Chud.com or AintItCool.com - they'll tell their friends and family to go and see it. And then those people will tell their friends and family to see it. And the next thing you know, you won't have some completely phony hit like Transformers 2 or Wolverine or Tomb Raider or Indiana Jones 4 or any of these other fanboy-driven "hits" (which open huge but then give way to the Next Big Thing after two days). No, instead you'll have....Titanic. Or maybe Office Space. Or The Shawshank Redemption.

The fanboy community didn't make those movies hits. The common man did. And, if Avatar is a good movie (and I'm 95% sure it will be), the common man will make it a hit, too.

-----

One quick note: I don't know how many other people have ever noticed this, but in Terminator 2 (which wasn't in 3D....how did I ever enjoy it?!?), while the T-1000 is chasing after the SWAT truck in his police helicopter, did ya ever stop and say, "Wait a sec....how could he fly a helicopter - which requires both hands and both feet - and fire his gun at the same time?")

Neither did I, and I know a fair amount about helicopters and a hell of a lot about Terminator 2.

But guess what. James Cameron did stop and ask that!

So, how would the T-1000 ever fly that helicopter and fire a gun, too? Well, he can make himself into any shape he wants, so he'd just grow extra ligaments. If you look for it in Terminator 2, you can clearly see that the T-1000 has four arms in the helicopter!

(See, now this is the sort of thing that will make Avatar a good or bad movie. Not whether you frickin' see it in Real-D or Imax or Imax 3D or 35mm or VHS or DVD or Blu-Ray or whatever the hell else.)

Trailer for Avatar

2009-08-20T11:58:00.010-04:00

It's just about noon (EST) on August 20th, 2009 (yes, my posts are so infrequent clarifying the year is required) and, like a lot of the rest of the world, I just saw the first video footage from Avatar via the trailer.

Anybody reading this obviously has their own thoughts and feelings about it, but here are mine:

1) It looks beautiful. Just aesthetically speaking. Disregarding the digital 3D hoopla and the incessant self-gratification about the performance capture....that's way down the Importance Totem Pole. I'm speaking of the creative content: the planet design, the Na'vi, the Pandoran predators, the interior set design, the characters, it all looks like a fully conceptualized, logically consistent, sense-of-wonder-inducing, science fiction world.

2) This is probably more a reflection on James Cameron's incredibly clear and evocative writing than it is on any psychological symmetry he and I might have, but the images look exactly as I imagined them when reading the scriptment. Exactly as I imagined them.

3) In a February 2007 blog entry, I wrote that I was suspicious that the scriptment would be fundamentally inverted to make the military ("the troops" in Avatar parlance) either (a) the outright heroes or (b) a more diluted form of evil than they were in Cameron's original story. This would be a dramatic shift from Cameron's prior interpretations of the government in general and its armed elements specifically (a'la The Abyss, Aliens, and Cameron's Terminator movies - the only Terminator stories that have ever been made). Even plowshares-before-swords, Canadian James Cameron, I feared, would succumb to modern America's pathetic idolatry of the military and concede to pressure from above.

Me of little faith. Judging by the trailer - both its similarity to the scriptment as well as its actual content - James Cameron is standing strong. While Michael Bay and Paramount take Pentagon dollars to propagandize Americans in their dogcrap, wannabe-Cameron movies, and while the DoD and the Department of Homeland Security both have powerful offices in Hollywood, dictating terms to writers and creating a "Ministry of Truth"-style climate, James Cameron's blade of integrity remains strong and true. Most of America and nearly all of Hollywood has fallen into a state of servile, decadent worship of the government and the military, and yet James Cameron remains the same moral, principled man he's always been.

My man.

Cold Man Runs to Fire

2009-03-03T04:43:00.009-05:00

Crappy Hack J.J. Abrams Sucks-up to James Cameron

James Cameron, in the words of Stan Winston, is "The ultimate pioneer." J.J. Abrams, in the words of David Brennan, is "The ultimate hack."

So why the heck is this hack running around fanboy gatherings promoting James Cameron's works? And does this make Avatar shitty by association? And does this mean we're going to have to endure other worthless people trying to legitimize themselves by cozying up to other great ones?

The answers, respectively, are:

1. Trying to gain sci-fi cred.
2. Not if I can wipe my memory of this image.
3. Yes.

Sci-fi website i09.com reported that J.J. Abrams was wearing an t-shirt for 'Avatar' during one those inane panel discussions at a pop culture "convention" (where fans pay for the privilege of being propagandized by the film studios for three straight days). Apparently, the shirt had some all-but-meaningless schematics from the movie (the suit humans have to wear to survive the methane-rich Pandora atmosphere), which was excuse enough to send the wannabe fanboys tripping over themselves in an attempt to divine meaning from the bizarre promotion.

Well, as long as Cameron doesn't start wearing Mission Impossible 3 t-shirts, I'll be able to withstand this. But if he does (or, for that matter, if he wears Cloverfield baseball caps), I'm going to have serious doubts about whether he's starting to show signs of late-middle-age dimensia.

In all seriousness, let's quantify how much J.J. Abrams is the doppelganger of the great James Cameron.

James Cameron's last movie, opened with a pretty-darn modest $28 million (yes, that was even modest in 1997). Once people saw the movie, they told their acquaintances to go and see it, who then told their acquaintances to see it. Very soon, before Steven Spielberg and George Lucas could say, "What the hell just happened?!?" the movie not only became the most successful movie of all time....it became the number-one movie of all time by a margin so big that you could fit two blockbusters between it and its closest competitor.

So, in honor of this masterpiece of genuine public appreciation, let's quickly rig a method to quantify how much people actually like a movie, and name it thusly. "The Titan Grade" will simply divide a movie's opening weekend gross by its total gross (North American figures only; folks in Sri Lanka and Russia only go to watch the pretty America pictures and don't have to listen to J.J. Abrams's embarassingly bad Syd Field-approved dribble.)

The Titan Score is figured thusly:

1-(Opening Weekend Gross/Total Domestic Gross)

Okay, it's as basic as can be, and it's hardly comprehensive or definitive (movies that open in limited release can't be measured at all). But still, using this system, it can be comfortably stated that, for any two movies released in the same timeframe, the movie with the higher score was better received by the moviegoing public. (Clearly, I'm no Blaise Pascal!)

Titanic's Titan Grade is 95%. (1-($28,638,131/600,788,188)

J.J. Abrams's most celebrated phony-fanboy-frolic, Cloverfield, scores a 50%. His other cinematic soul vacuum, Mission Impossible 3 (no, these "movies" don't merit hyperlinks), had an almost equally abyssmal Titan Grade of 34%. (Now, does this mean that his next magnum crapus, Star Trek, is going to suck, too? Well, yeah, it does. The man hacks more than Woody Harrelson and Tommy Chong at Hash Bash.)

Everything James Cameron is, in other words, J.J. Abrams is not.

So why is he running around turning himself into a walking billboard for Avatar? Well, I'm guessing it's because of an old expression: "When it's cold outside, people run towards the fire."

James Cameron on CBC (Oct. '08)

2009-01-25T15:24:00.005-05:00

ENGAGING & FUN, BUT NOT TOO REVEALING

This CBC interview was taped last October (don't know how I missed it!), and there are a few biographical tidbits that I was unaware of, including his pre-Corman days as a machinist and a high school janitor ("When you're sitting in high school wondering who guts the gum off the desk? That was me!"), but the conversation is mostly as trite as the 15-minute run-time would lead you to belief, not excepting the subject of Avatar.

The apparent reason for the trip to his homeland was that he was receiving a star on the Canadian Walk of Fame. As he points out, this is a uniquely meaningful honor because it came at a time of relatively low-visibility, so it was genuine recognition as opposed to the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Like he says, you have to pay for that "honor". (Isn't it suspicious that celebrities always conveniently "earn" Hollywood stars right when their latest project is arriving? It's a good bet that, come December '09, Fox will make the payoff and Cameron'll gamely play that silly publicity stunt.)

About eleven minutes in, he apparently jokes that they're going to retrofit Titanic into 3D and re-release it. However, I know that this is being done to many other movies (including Star Wars), so it's very possible that he was serious. (Personally, I think that this is a waste of manpower and, because you cannot fundamentally improve on the original source material of 35-mm film, a transparent gimmick, so I hope it was a joke.)

For my fellow quote hounds, here's his philosophical soundbite:

"You do have to have a really strong personal ethos in the film business because there is so much craziness and backstabbing and fame is very fleeting fickle and all those things. So ultimately being a person of your word, I think, is really important."

And here's a funny-because-it's-true comment:

"It's a fun challenge as a male to write female characters and have them not just be, like, ya know....guys with tits. You can't treat a female action character as just a soulless warrior or women won't relate to her."

Please feel free to make observations or expound on the interview in the comment section. Also....send me some links, eh? This darn interview was conducted back in October, so I can't catch everything!

Video I Edited: 'Obi-Wan Kenobi: Whacko Conspiracy Theorist?'

2008-11-19T17:19:00.008-05:00

Because I'm interested in both 'Star Wars' and substantive politics (as opposed to pop politics), I threw this video together a couple of weeks ago. Because my equipment leaves something to be desired, it looks a little bit raw, but overall it's representative of what I intended.

Avatar Scriptment: Summary, Review, and Analysis

2007-02-19T19:30:00.001-05:00

Part 2: Analysis of the Avatar Scriptment

NOTE: This is just a series of random thoughts and comments I have about 'Avatar'.

"It's fine for a guy to be attracted to women, but I need the male audience to respond to this guy and say, 'Yeah, I see why people would follow him'."

-James Cameron on Josh Sully

I could've chosen any one of about half a dozen quotes from Avatar which similarly show that Josh is a great man because of his inner character - his bravery and independence - rather than the superficial traits pop culture ascribes to men ("attitude" and "testosterone" or being a "NASCAR Dad" or any other laughably desperate label), but this quote is just arch-Cameron in its totally casual incisiveness.

The scene in the story where cynical Grace warms up to Josh is cool and refreshingly non-timid behavior for a man (it could only happen in a movie, though: most workplaces would fire the man on the spot for being "hostile" or "aggressive"). Later, Zuleika also takes to Josh because of his bravery.

So I guess the point I'm making here is that Josh is going to be a real man in the Rudyard Kipling sense (James Cameron's words....although he'd be wise to never use them again, as Rudyard Kipling is now politically incorrect).

In addition to Kipling, Cameron also tossed out names like Edgar Rice Burroughs, H. Rider Haggard, Lawrence of Arabia (the movie itself) and Russell Crowe in Gladiator as inspirations for Josh Sully.

But reading Avatar, there's one other movie which I don't think there's any question provided some dose of inspiration (and more than just a teaspoon): Dances With Wolves. The two stories are so remarkably parallel that it's impossible to think that Cameron wasn't influenced by the 1990 classic. (In the notes on the laserdisc for The Abyss: Special Edition, Cameron actually acknowledged Dances With Wolves - and Kevin Costner, specifically - for reopening the doorway for 3-hour movies, which had gone against Hollywood business philosophy for over a decade.)

"People have asked me if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future and my answer has been recently that I am pessimistic about systems and optimistic about individuals."

James Cameron, 1998

Last fall, Sports Illustrated wrote about the aftermath of Pat Tillman's death, and writer Gary Smith did a really awesome job of describing the cognitive dissonance between Pat Tillman's family - this strong, independent-minded group with true California fiber - and the U.S. Department of Defense - which is both the most powerful entity in the history of mankind and the most bureaucratic and system-centric entity.

So after Pat was killed, the Army told the Tillman family a series of lies (deliberate, orchestrated lies), and they expected the Tillman family to react the way that the average military family would react: they'd give their honesty away. They'd nod their heads mournfully, thank the military for being our heroes and saviors, and then repeat the Army's lies for the rest of their lives. Instead of following this script, though, the Tillman family called the Army out on its orgy of truly dark lies. The Army wasn't just embarrassed by the Tillman's search for the truth....they were confused by it. (The lieutenant who wrote the Army's second official report, Ralph Kauzlarich, laughably said that the reason that the Tillman's wouldn't stop pursuing the truth is because they weren't Christians who knew their son was in Heaven. Thus he exposed himself as both corrupt and wholly ignorant of Christianity.)

Here's how Sports Illustrated writer Gary Smith interpreted the dynamic (which continues to this day, incidentally): "How were men who made their living in a bureaucracy....people accustomed to giving truth a little pull here, another tug there for the sake of their institutions, to foresee the tension that would be created when they began stretching the story of the death of a man who put so little stock in institutions....and so much in living an honest life?"

Now, there is a reason for this story in a James Cameron blog. It's to illustrate a real-world example of the eternal human conflict that's at the heart of Avatar (or at least near its heart): the tension between people who love the systems which support them (and who cede their honesty and their consciences to that system), and those people who are compelled to something more ethereal and abstract (perhaps God, an ideal, a personal dream, whatever) and, by having this greater dream or faith, don't have to give a damn for systems and institutions.

I don't think it's a stretch to say that Avatar is probably as violently an anti-system story as anybody could possibly write. I mean, the SECFOR military in this story is the most uniformally sadistic and corrupt force you can imagine. (They're always called just "the troops", although I'm certain that political correctness has forced a change in that language.) The troops are shown as sadistic automotons, taking delight in the genocide of Pandora's indigenous people throughout the story and, at one point, mocking a crippled man when he falls out of his wheelchair.

The sadism of the troops is equaled, though, by the sadism they receive. The story seems to take great joy in concocting newer, more-grotesque ways to kill them. "The troops" die from....

-Being stampeded by a herd of rhino-like animals
-Asphyxiation
-Run over by tractors
-Pierced by the beak of a pterodactyl-like beast (while Grace shrugs casually)
-Arrows through their throats....

And the list goes on.

I'm going to be totally honest with you: I'd be amazed if even a shred of this important element of the original story exists anymore. Both The Pentagon and the Department of Homeland Security have offices at every major studio, and, I mean, they might be bureaucratic morons but even Cletus the Slack Jawed Yokel can spot the profoundly anti-military sentiment in here. It's not like trying to decrypt Finnegan's Wake or anything, ya know? (And for whatever it's worth, Cameron's brother, Dave, was a Marine.)

(I guess....I guess I'm partial to this "political" angle of Avatar. Not just because the military's evils often get whitewashed (FYI: Pat Tillman was not - NOT - killed accidentally. It was murder.) and not just because I think that this tension between systems and creative people is an important human dynamic in everyday life as well as in dramatic arenas, but because there's so much damn political correctness nowadays about "the troops" that, reading the story, I felt cathartic chills. I mean, I went to a baseball game last year and during the 7th inning, they didn't even sing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" anymore, but instead made everybody stand up and place their hands on their heart while they sang "God Bless America". Everybody was pretending to cry and all this phony nonsense. I mean....it was disgusting. But whatever, aye?)

And speaking of cognitive dissonance....

"The seafaring nations of Europe grew mighty from the wealth returned from the discovery and settlement of the New World. Those societies who stayed home languished, those who embraced the unknown prospered. Seen broadly, we are a species which owes its current success to Exploration."

-James Cameron

James Cameron spent his time on NASA's board of advisers aggressively championing exploration and pushing hard for a move to Mars. His writing about exploration is (no surprise) inspiring and I don't think that there's any question that it's fully thought out and heartfelt. He uses words like "our outbound quest can [satisfy our soul]." and "We need to push outward." He didn't use the words "manifest destiny"....but he might as well have.

So it's hard to believe that a man who spent so much time, money, and energy romanticizing exploration write a story in which that very human trait results in so much villainy. One would expect that the timid souls who languish on decaying Earth would be the villains in a James Cameron movie.

In Avatar, the RDA are the European colonists and the Na'vi are the Native Americans, right? (Right. This analogy is made time and again in the scriptment.) So it's totally contradictory that the "Europeans" are the heroes in his real world view, but in this fictional world, they're the villains.

I know that, in a way, I'm writing about a false dichotomy: Avatar doesn't denigrate exploration, but rather exploitation. But I think we've seen in modern, feminized America how much guilt by association we have. Americans have turned on the very men who explored, civilized, and colonized this land. Columbus is the bad guy in textbooks across the country, and the Spanish, Dutch, and Englishmen who braved unspeakably dangerous voyages to carve out a life from the wilderness are all evil racists. (I wonder why the white people who so hate their ancestors don't commit suicide out of shame.)

So what I'm saying is that the message of Avatar won't be that mankind's exploration is bad, it will be that the RDA (the businesses pillaging Pandora, the "system") is bad. But, well, that's just not how lazy-minded people will perceive it.

I think it will be a great irony when two people are discussing whether we should explore the universe and the "con" side of the argument says, "No, we'll just screw everything up, just like the bad guys in Avatar!"

-----

Really quickly, I also wanted to write about one of my primary gripes in science fiction - a pratfall that I wish that the greatest of all science fiction minds, James Cameron, would avoid - and that is the tendency to overlook the idea of the Singuarity. The Singularity is a broad, complex idea which I don't want to carry on about here, but in a nutshell it's the idea that our various technological advances in every field - from genetics to nanotech to IT - are advancing exponentially (doubling roughly 18 months, in accordance with "Moore's Law" which referred to computer processors) and that around the year 2030 (and there's frightening consistency in the projections) our technology will be so advanced that we'll transcend humanity.

I know, I know, it's an abstract concept that sounds flaky, but make no mistake there is some hard science behind it and some truly great minds, including Ray Kurzweil and Bill Joy.

But it's a lot easier to write stories where mankind in the future is just like mankind of today, only we don't have winters and we do have spaceships....but some very important research suggests that things are a whole hell of a lot more complex than that. In this, Avatar is really archaic science fiction - from the 1960's mind of Ray Bradbury rather than from the 2000's mind of James Cameron, where I wish it would have come from.

Cameron has said that he aspires for Avatar to be mythic, and it will be. But I wish he could have created something more realistic, too.

(And if anybody wants to read my illustrated science fiction epic which doesn't shy away from the Singularity....e-mail me at DavidCBrennan@aol.com!!!)

Avatar Scriptment: Summary, Review, and Analysis

2007-02-11T04:46:00.001-05:00

Part 1: Summary of the Avatar Scriptment

First off, a couple of disclaimers. The scriptment was written over a decade ago, and has, by all accounts, been revamped to a pretty high degree. So lots of the events and characters will be different in the film version.

Secondly (and most of you probably know this, but it still bears mentioning), this was just a crude scriptment, and just as a recipe doesn't do justice to actually eating the entree, nor does the scriptment do justice to the cinematic experience. (This also means that my summary probably doesn't even do justice to the scriptment!)

_____ _____ _____

We begin on planet Earth a hundred years hence, and it's pretty depressing. The planet's ecosystem has been so exploited by humankind that it can barely even shelter us any longer. Stripmining, air pollution, and every other form of exploitation and abuse have lead to mankind living in a tired world. "A cross between THX-1138 and a Calcutta train station," says the scriptment.

Because we've used up all Earth's resources (and apparently recycling techniques haven't advanced much) many companies are looking to the rest of the galaxy for new resources, and there's no extraterrestrial locale richer in resources than Pandora. Sure, pillaging Pandora has its problems (it's five light-years away and its atmosphere is toxic for humans to breathe) but its billions and billions of dollars worth of a (fictitious) superconducter called unobatainium make those hurdles well worth jumping over. There's a joint-venture of companies called the RDA who have a massive colony on Pandora to mine for unobtainium, as well as Pandora's many other resources.

Josh Sully (mid-twenties), is a disllusioned war vet, paralyzed from some meaningless war a few years back. (Spinal medicine apparently hasn't advanced much, either. Like much of science fiction - including even Star Trek - Avatar is frustratingly selective about how and where our technology has advanced.) Because he happens to have genes which are useful to the RDA, Josh ultimately finds himself making the three-year trip to Pandora to work on the Avatar program.

Pandora's most sentient race is called the Na'vi, and the RDA has a way to communicate with them. They grow Na'vi bodies and then those bodies are controlled externally by, well, "controllers". The controllers wear a headset called the link, and their human bodies are effectively unconscious while commandeering their Na'vi avatar. (Only a small percentage of humans have genes which allow for an Avatar body to be grown for them, and Josh is needed because he's in the minority.)

So Josh and the new crew from Earth awaken from suspended animation and arrive at the RDA's Pandora colony. It's run by Selfridge, an efficient company man wholly dedicated to the RDA. He also oversees the compound's massive, highly-trained military force, SECFOR, which is run mostly by Colonel Quaritch, a military man through-and-through who loves blood and hates life....especially Pandoran life.

Josh also meets Grace, who is both an Avatar and the compound's "xenobotanist". After he defends himself against her cynicism and insults, Grace takes to Josh and eventually becomes his mentor. (In the film, Grace will be the head of the entire Avatar program.)

So Josh begins life as a Na'vi. Their bodies are very human-like - they're bipedal and with similar faces - but they're blue, 10-feet tall, and evoke a feline impression, complete with a tail. Also, the Na'vi are much stronger, faster, and more agile than humans. At first, Josh is just happy to be walking again.

The Avatar program is just a small part of the RDA's Pandoran operation, there's a palpable tension between those in the Avatar program and everybody else. While most of the people at Hell's Gate (the RDA compound) are just mindless labor or system-dependant troops, the Avatar controllers are described sort of like a pack of stoners, high on the experience of living as a Na'vi. Says the scriptment, "They are a scruffy, smelly lot...with unkempt hair and beards and poor appetites."

When you put these two types of people together....something's bound to snap.

During an early venture into the beautiful but ultra-lethal Pandoran wilderness, one of the trigger-happy troops is about to fire at Grace's Avatar. Josh, now comfortable in his Avatar body, manhandles the troop (like a "ragdoll") and this doesn't exactly help in easing the tension between the two groups.

Later, on a seperate venture into Pandora, Josh gets seperated from the rest of the Avatars and finds himself having to fend for himself in the ultra-savage Pandoran wilderness. This is like putting a three year-old out in the middle of the worst jungles of Africa and expecting him to survive. The only way to survive in Pandora is knowledge, and Josh is still a novice.

But he's brave. After witnessing a manticore ("This thing could eat a T-Rex and have the Alien for dessert") scarf down a titanothere (like a rhino, only bigger and faster), Josh is then attacked by a pack of viperwolves ("Wolves as painted by Francis Bacon") and is saved by somebody who has a lot of knowledge of Pandora: Zuleika, the princess of the local Na'vi tribe. (How does she look? Well, when was the last time you saw an ugly princess in a Hollywood movie?)

Like Grace, Josh gets through Zuleika's tough exterior because she's inspired by his bravery and feistiness.

So Zuleika takes Josh back to her village, showing him the infinite mysteries of the Pandoran ecosystem. (It's like listening to a Greenpeace fanatic talk about Earth.) Josh meets the tribe, including Zuleika's parents, and begins the spiritual transformation from human to Na'vi. He feels "right" as a Na'vi.

(The scriptment makes clear in numerous places that the Na'vi are analogs for the Native Americans and their culture emobodies all of the traits that we descendants of European Christendom most romanticize about the Native Americans: a close community, a connection to the spiritual world, and, most of all, harmony with nature. And in Pandora, the spirtual world and nature are synonymous.

(In keeping with this analogy, the RDA is openly modeled after the European settlers.)

In the following days, Josh and Zuleika's bond grows and there's an elaborate montage of Josh fully learning the ways of the Na'vi and how to surivive in Pandora. He's a natural amongst them, and far more intuitive than the other science-minded Avatars. And more courageous, too.

Because of this, Josh is the first Avatar that the Na'vi invite into their ritualistic sturmbeest hunt (i.e., a buffalo hunt squared). This is where the important concept of "queueing" comes into play. Most Pandoran creatures have an external nerve which acts as an input port to their brains. The Na'vi have the output, called their queue, which enables them to jack into the animals and commandeer them. (The Na'vi queue looks like a ponytail, with the hair being functional nerves.)

After the sturmbeest hunt (where Josh again proves his courageous mettle), he partakes in the Na'vi's festive celebration. Afterwards, Zuleika takes Josh to her special place in the forest and they make love.

The next day, the real trouble begins. Selfridge unexpectedly bulldozes a large section of the Na'vi forest, including sacred land. Josh and Grace, in human form, argue against this new construction, especially in light of the new potential Josh's bonding with the Na'vi has created. But Selfridge and the troops are sick of the Avatar program (presumably jealous of them), and the bulldozing continues the next day. This time, Powersuit-armed troops accompany the bulldozers, killing anything that moves. Powersuits, as their name suggests, are massive robotic soots that dramatically improve the troops size, speed, strength, etc.

Josh realizes that there's no reasoning with Selfridge or the system-worshipping troops and bureaucrats beneath him, so he seeks assistance from his fellow controllers, trying to arrange some sort of coup. "Pandora is not Hell, it's Eden. And Eden is being bulldozed and stripmined and raped. We have no right. We are the aliens here. We are the space monsters".

The Avatar controllers might have free minds but, alas, they're non-committal.

That's cool. Because it's not like the Na'vi were responding to the foreign aggression with sing-ins and picket signs. Led by Tsu Te, their greatest warrior, the Na'vi sabotage the RDA's construction equipment, destroying it with a napalm-like incendiary.

The next day Selfridge orders a retaliatory raid and Quaritch and his troops love it. They hop into their powersuits and raid the Na'vi with an assault that makes Haditha or My Lai look like a schoolyard scuffle. Countless Na'vi are killed, including the tribe's patriach (Zuleika's father), and many others are taken prisoner....including Zuleika.

Selfridge has also shut down the Avatar program, physically turning off the link equipment. But Josh, Grace, and several others head to Site 26, an auxiliary link facility. On the way, Grace takes a bullet, and her human body ultimately dies.

After re-linking to his Avatar, Josh goes to the Na'vi and helps them orchestrate a rescue of their imprisoned friends. (There's nothing especially clever about this rescue: they get in under cover of the RDA's tractors and protect themselves from the automated sentry guns by wearing employee's identifying badges.)

As the Na'vi are fleeing the facility, Quaritch and the rest of the troops discover what's happened and they Powersuit up and chase the Na'vi into the forest. The Na'vi, though, utterly destroy the troops, killing many of them brutally. Quaritch, the bloodthirsty trooper, is left dumbstruck at the defeat of his team. "What the hell is happening. They just go their asses kicked by bows and arrows?"

This episode prompts a formal declaration of war from Selfridge: the Na'vi are all to be killed, as are the renegade controllers.

And Josh is rallying the Na'vi with no less enthusiasm. He gives his best Henry V speech. Here's an excerpt:

"He tells them they are not just fighting for this part of the forest or these few trees, but for the very future of their world. He says the history [of the humans]....is one of blood. For as long as can be remembered, they take what is not theirs.... Their world, their forest, is a dying place. A poisoned place. They have killed their mother. And they will do the same here. The must be driven away. When they come again they will come with all their force, and we must be ready. We must fight, to our last breath...."

After speech, Grace's Na'vi body miraculously appears. (Her human body had been killed, remember.) Grace, now living exclusively as a Na'vi, explains the wholistic wonders of the Pandoran ecosystem. Pandora, the planet itself, is essentially a brain, its tress are the neurons, their roots its synapses. The humans and their troops were a cancer for Pandora, and so it used its resources (the animal and the plants) to cleanse itself of the cancer. Lastly (and this will be important later), Pandora can sometimes do a "soul transfer", put one consciousness into another body (where the Na'vi keep their spare bodies, I don't know), and it chose to save Grace's soul in this manner.

Josh then has all the Na'vi queue into the planet itself so that he can explain to Pandora the magnitude of the danger the humans present. He tells her about the Navajo and the Sioux, and how their treaties and their trust was betrayed, as will Pandora be betrayed if she trusts the humans.

Pandora listens.

The next day, Selfridge and Quaritch begin the epic war that will later be called the Battle of the Big Rock Candy Mountain.

The first part of the battle is in the air between thousands of queued Na'vi riding bansheerays and leonyptertyx (savage, hawk-like predators with wingspans of perhaps 30 meters) against dozens of humans vehicles, which all have VTOL ability. Most of the human ships are destroyed in a hydrogen explosion when a massive hydrogen-based bug is detonated.

While the air battle rages, dozens of troops in Powersuits raid the forest, as well. Here, the Na'vi have the help of all of Pandora's creatures, which the planet has directed against the humans.

Now these two interconnected battles are too dense with events for me to explain here. Suffice to say, the Pandorans eventually come ou ton top.

The battle climaxes in a fight between Josh (as a Na'vi, of course) fighting Colonel Quaritch in a Powersuit. Josh eventually gets Quaritch out of the suit. Quaritch flees back to the base on foot but is chased down by a pack of viperwolves.

And that's it for the Battle of the Big Rock Candy Mountain.

All the suriviving humans are rounded up - including Selfridge - and shipped back to the command ship in Pandora's orbit. Josh bluffs to them that Pandora is developing an extremely potent antibody for humans in its atmosphere, and if they return they will all certainly die.

That night, the Na'vi gather in a chant, queued into the planet itself. Josh's human and Avatar bodies lie side by side. His rebreather is removed from his human body, insuring its death. Zuleika kisses him....and his Na'vi eyes open.

_____ _____ _____

Note: I'll be posting my review of the story within a few days , and some other thoughts and analysis a few days after that. By February 20th - at the absolute latest - I'll have everything posted. As always, feel free to write e-mail or post questions in the comments section.

UPDATE: Avatar Review Will be One Day Late

2007-02-10T23:17:00.000-05:00

With sincere apologies, I want to say that my review of Avatar is going to be a little late. I promised to have it posted today, but I'll have it up by tomorrow, the 11th. (This time, I don't just promise, but cross-my-heart and hope-to-die promise!)

To the extent that you're interested in an excuse, I've been busy trying to get funding for my business, and I've also just spread myself a little thin in studying the story.

Coming Soon: Review of Avatar Scriptment

2007-01-25T18:37:00.000-05:00

Most of you probably know by now that Avatar is now official. Since the news came over two weeks ago and this is the first update since then, you've probably deduced that, while this is a pretty good place to come for opinions, I'm not stopping any presses with insider scoops.

However, through my relentless and intrepid investigatory work (www.google.com), I've finally obtained a full copy of the original scriptment for Avatar, and you can check back in here by February 10th for a full review. If you have any specific questions about it, e-mail them to me at DavidCBrennan@aol.com and I'll make sure to answer them, either in the review or via e-mail (the smart money's on "Can I have a copy?" as being the most submitted query).

Oh sure, the Avatar script's been floating around for a decade, so you can find plenty of reviews elsewhere online....but my opinions are the only ones that count, okay? (And you're also bound to find my criticisms laughably politically incorrect. (I mean, aren't I the only guy to slip in a reference to the Duke lacrosse hoax when mentioning James Cameron's works?)

In the meantime, here are some relevant links:

1) AintItCoolNews on seeing The Polar Express in D-3D, comparable to Avatar's. (After venturing out to see The Polar Express in Imax 3D myself, I agree with the praise of the format, although not really to the same degree. One other note is that, for some reason, digital movies like The Polar Express look a lot better in this format than real-world shoots in D-3D, such as Aliens of the Deep.)

2) AintItCoolNews on Robert Zemeckis' comparable upcoming digital movie, Beowulf.

3) Greg Dean Schmitz at Yahoo Movies now has an Avatar page. This site has some pretty good stuff....on the rare occasion when they have anything at all. But while it might get updated about as frequently as Star magazine's Pullitzer collection, when they do post a bit of gossip, you can go ahead and mark it down as fact.

Battle Angel Shelved; Avatar Now Planned for 2009

2006-12-22T11:22:00.000-05:00

Battle Angel Alita is currently O.T.B.* according to Yahoo Movies' Greg Dean Schmitz. This really came as no surprise considering that there'd been absolutely zero talk about it since early 2005, when Cameron had mentioned a 2007 release date.

The Independent of London scored an interview with the big man, ostensibly to promote The Exodus Decoded. In the interview, Cameron talks about a number of other things, including Avatar. I was suprised to learn that he actually wrote Avatar over a decade ago. Based on the bits and pieces I've read about it, Avatar definitely seems to make a lot more sense for Cameron than Battle Angel Alita, not just because he actually wrote it himself, but because Avatar looks to deal with lots of more profound themes than the Battle Angel manga did.

But to be honest, I suggest taking every declaration about a James Cameron picture with an entire mine of salt, because, of course, there's been lots of changes and flip-flopping ever since Titanic.

One other note about Avatar: In the foreward to a new coffee table book about Stan Winston's career, Cameron mentions that he's working with his old Digital Domain partner yet again on the designs for the alien creatures in the picture.

*O.T.B. is sports gambling vernacular for "off the board", ususally used to halt all betting because some variable suddenly effect's the contest's probable outcome.

An Explorer & The Mice

2006-12-05T07:57:00.000-05:00

"Exploration is not a luxury. It defines us as a civilization."

-James Cameron

As this is being written, NASA has just announced that we are going to be building a permanant base on the Moon. In 2020, man will set foot on the Moon for the first time in 48 years and begin the process of building a mall-size base which will be permanently staffed four years later. In effect, we're colonizing our moon. The most important principle behind this, though, is that the lunar base itself is not being touted as the endgame, but rather the means to an even greater end: manned exploration to Mars and then to....Titan? Europa? The possibilities are literally infinite.

I'll hold my tongue on some of the small criticisms and worries I have and just celebrate the greater triumph: at last, man is exploring again.

As guest editor of Wired magazine in 2004, James Cameron wrote an incisive and impassioned argument to resume space exploration. In fact, many of the specific ideas Cameron championed - involvement from the private sector and wedge fund allocation - were echoed in NASA's announcement of this new lunar mission. Cameron's argument is a great combination of useful data and human insight, but there's something that sets it apart from almost all of his other writing.

Typically, James Cameron has an uncanny ability to gauge and then impartially accept whatever it is that the masses are thinking. (In an interview with Randall Frakes about Titanic, he talked about the "invisible audience" he carries around in his head while making a picture.) But in this essay, his frustration at America's collective exploratory paralysis is palpable. To close the piece, he addresses and tersely defeats virtually every argument against space exploration. And then, with what seems to be an angry abruptness, he says simply, "What are we waiting for? Let's go."

At that point, readers might know what the crew on his movies feels like.

It's worth noting for all the environmentalists out there who might get jealous for Earth, Cameron even offered up a "green" rationale for exploration. In a seperate interview:

"We are playing fast and loose with our planet, and if it turns out to be the only place within a hundred light years in any direction that's got life, we might want to take things a little easier, be a little bit more respectful."

(So now they have enough of an excuse to look to the stars and still worship Earth.)

After Titanic, Cameron seems to have divided his professional life into three arenas:

1) Developing digital 3-D cinema in general and his "reality camera system" in particular.

2) Working on several feature movies in various capacities, including Solaris, Battle Angel Alita, Avatar, and Sanctum.

3) And most of all, he's exploring the ocean floor in every conceivable way: developing new tools, making documentaries about his journey, studying what clues deep sea life gives us about astrobiology. Cameron was scuba diving as a teenager, so he's definitely the same person now as he was then (as he's said before).

Cameron has used his seat on NASA's Board of Advisors to help arrange for scientists to accompany him on his trips, as shown in Aliens of the Deep.

But wait! According to a Slate.com hit piece written upon the release of Aliens of the Deep, Cameron is merely "feigning" interest in sea exploration. The way writer Bryan Curtis sees it, Cameron is actually just a "B-movie" maker who's suffering from "filmmaker's block" and his career is headed for a "watery grave".

The entire Slate piece - written almost two years ago - encapsulates lots of the petty disparagments that the phonies at message boards cavalierly throw out at this astoundingly accomplished man. What's especially aggravating about these insults is that they're manifestly bogus. The Slate piece nonchalantly references Cameron's innermost feelings and motives, things they couldn't possibly know. They claim he has writer's block, then they say that he's scared by his post Titanic respectability (as if he weren't respected before; aside from all being box office hits, a quick glance at RottenTomatoes.com shows that all five of his pre-Titanic pictures got positive notices, most of them overwhelmingly positive). Most outrageous of all in the Slate piece, they somehow claim to know that he's "feigning" his interest in oceanic exploration. These people who've probably never even met him casually act as if they've just administered an intensive psychoanalysis treatment.

If Cameron's oceanic exploration is a hoax, than it makes the Piltdown Man hoax look about as obvious as the Duke lacrosse rape hoax.

It's funny, when I first started writing this, I was a little more angry about these message board critics, I even had a perfect phrase crafted: "Phonies pathetically trying to look sophisticated."

But then, this morning, I saw NASA's announcement that we're going back to the Moon and, for a minute, I got that momentary sense of wonder that you sometimes get when you're watching a great movie, reading a great story, or playing a great video game. And I realized that it's impossible to use reason against people who are inherently dishonest. If they cared about truth, they wouldn't be lying in the first place.

So I guess the larger issue here is that James Cameron, professional explorer, inventor, artist, and filmmaker, aggressively championed a renaissance of space travel, and now he - and the entire civilized world - can celebrate the fact that, hey....we are going.

The World's Biggest Moviemaker on America's Most Controversial Subject

2006-09-26T13:32:00.001-04:00

A quick word before you get to the good stuff: Abortion is one of - if not exclusively - the most divisive cultural issue in modern society. It's obviously the topic of millions (billions?) of dollars of political contributions, the source of far too much rancor and animosity, and the cause of a broad social climate of disconnection and hostility.

I don't mean to bring these hostilities into the movies of James Cameron. But they're already there.

Maybe that's not quite right. The HOSTILITIES aren't anywhere in his movies. You don't see any picket-sign wielding throngs and screaming protestors in 'Terminator 2.' And if you thought you saw self-important focus groups or pandering politicians in 'Aliens', well you were probably on some very powerful hallucinogens. Rather than having direct, mean-spirited monologues, the subject matter comes about in mature and humane ways. They're themes rather than talking points. Few people would debate the miracle of creating life, which is one of the themes in Cameron's movies. And even less debatable is the theme about the sanctity of the bond between mother and child, which is another theme. Both of these themes in conjunction with some specific dialogue ultimately point to a conscious commentary on abortion.

So my point in this extended disclaimer is that James Cameron was never obnoxious or childish about the subject, and I hope that nobody who takes the time to read this will be, either.

__________

"Women, who create life from their bodies, must be the guardians of life in the male-driven world where all technological advance seems to lead only to more effective ways of killing."

-James Cameron [1]

James Cameron has written and directed six major features [2] and there are common threads that run through pretty much all of them. First and foremost there's the astounding level of technological craftsmanship in the movies (Hollywood's foremost make-up and costume guru, Stan Winston, says that Cameron deserves more credit than anybody else in bringing about cinema's digital revolution of the 90's)[3]. But there are strong thematic threads, too. Among these threads are self-sacrifice (in four of his six features the main hero sacrifices his life for a loved one) and, ironically considering Cameron's engineering background and astounding technical competence, there's a cautious, even weary attitude about mankind's relationship with technology. (Cameron reconciles this cognitive dissonance with a statement that is, as always, succinct and pitch-perfect: "Technology itself is amoral. It's what we do with the technology that lends it morality or immorality.")

This essay examines two of the less direct themes of his movies: the sanctity of the bond between mother and child and the miracle of creating life. Cameron's not making movies for Lifetime television, so a mother's love in a James Cameron movie is more likely to be expressed by blowing up a defense contractor's headquarters than, say, getting all teary-eyed in some romantically-lit courtroom; but the idea is the same. The emphasis on the creation of life (conscious life, to be specific; I haven't seen any PETA-type commentaries in his movies) is also unmistakable. From Sarah Connor's love for her son John to Jack's dying wish to Rose, Cameron is obviously a believer in the importance of procreation. From these two beliefs, it's only a short leap into commentating on abortion. Here's the evidence that Cameron injects subtle but unmistakable references to abortion in the movies. I think the theme is undeniable, but you can obviously judge for yourself.

James Cameron's first movie, The Terminator, is more than anything else a love story between Sarah Connor and Kyle Reese. Kyle Reese emerges from an unspeakably horrifying hell - a post-apocalypse future inspired in part by the Warsaw ghettos - into the pre-apocalypse past where, after a lifetime of pain, he finally finds spiritual respite in the woman he's meant to save, the "lowliest waitress", Sarah Connor.[4] Their love is finally consummated in a scene of stunning emotional catharsis. The music finally changes from mechanical thumping to organic tenderness. The acting is passionate and uninhibited. Their love is truly, "a candle burning in the darkness of a doomed world."[5]

And then here comes the Terminator. Closing in on his roaring motorcycle to kill the product of that love.

When you think about it, the Terminator character in The Terminator is essentially just a mechanized abortionist. This is simply the nature of the story but it's also explicitly stated when the smarmy police psychologist Dr. Silberman says that the Terminator has travelled back in time to perform a "retroactive abortion". When the movie's main villian is trying to murder mankind's savior via abortion, it definitely seems to raise an eyebrow to the moral justification for abortion.

Two years after The Terminator came Aliens. Newt, the young child that survived the aliens' takeover of the small human colony, becomes, in effect, Ripley's daughter. Ripley's own daughter has died [6] and she nurtures and vows to protect Newt. In a rare quiet scene in the unrelenting movie, Ripley is trying to nurture Newt to sleep. Newt asks her about the sinister aliens' parasitic impregnation of humans.

"Is that how babies come? I mean, people babies?"

Ripley gets a warm, maternal smile. "No, that's very different." She then goes on to talk about her biological daughter.

Later in the movie when the queen alien kidnaps Newt, Ripley risks life and limb to save her adopted young. Ripley knows that the queen values her own young and buys a momentary stand-off by aiming her flamethrower at the eggs with the queen's unborn babies. Needless to say, Ripley soon kills them all anyway and as the eggs burn the queen alien shreeks in utter horror. Sure, the aliens in the movie are pure evil, but there's still the implication that they at least have the darwinian drive to propagate and spread their DNA to the future. Although this is a facet of almost all life, the fact that the movie plays off of this concept, I believe, points to a direct conscientiousness of creating life on the part of Cameron.

Three years later Cameron made The Abyss. Here, the entire climax of the movie is a stated allegory for childbirth. Rather than stumbling over my own words, I'll quote James Cameron directly from his essay, 'A Few Notes on the Thinking Behind The Abyss'.[7]

Love keeps us alive, by giving our lives meaning. Bud himself enters the actual abyss to disarm the bomb, but he is als embarking on a voyage to the underworld. Bud....falls, regressing into insensibility, curling in upon himself, until he is like an embryo falling through a void between worlds. Like a fetus he has liquid in his lungs, and is all alone in a black liquid world. The abyss becomes the void between life and death.

"Pre-birth and post-death become one state of consciousness, as described in the Tibetan Book of the Dead. The ego alone in the void. The voice of the one he loves is the emotional umbilical which connects him to the other world. Lindsey becomes his mother, the one thing which exists outside of himself. Reminding him that he is not alone."

So in Cameron's first three movies we have a villainous abortionist, a mother tenderly talking about childbirth and risking her own life to protect her young, and then a hero who is, metaphorically, a fetus.

Believe it or not, Terminator 2: Judgment Day, his fourth movie, has what is probably the most explicit sentiment in favor of creating life and against that which destroys life. Here's Sarah Connor - after suffering years of nightmares of the nuclear holocaust she knows is coming - speaking to a computer programmer who will bring about the defense technology for that war:

"Men like you built the hydrogen bomb. Men like you thought it up." [She cynically smirks in frustration.] "You think you're so creative. You don't know what it's like to really create something. To create a life. To feel it growing inside you. All you know how to create is death and destruction."

The "creation of life" Sarah refers to is obviously her son's.

A few years after the amazing success of T2 came what is almost certainly the most casual and least-internalized movie of Cameron's, True Lies. And yet casual though the movie is, Cameron still manages to slip in an abortion reference. Tom Arnold's callous and sarcastic character is glibly poking fun at Arnold Schwarzenegger's character's inability to control his rebellious daughter, who they just caught stealing some money. Arnold Schwarzenegger humors all of Tom Arnold's little jokes until he says:

"She's probably stealing the money to pay for an abortion."

Arnold Schwzenegger's character suddenly has all the humor drain from his face. "Why don't you open the door?!" he says threateningly.

And then there's Titanic. I have to say, this movie contains all the recurrent themes and motifs of James Cameron: self-sacrifice, mankind's technological hubris, a sadistic and un-feeling cop (well, ex-cop in this movie), there's even a brief moment when Jack and Rose rescue a child where they briefly form a sort of nuclear family, another Cameron staple. And yet....there's nothing in this movie that could be considered any sort of commentary on abortion. It is worth noting, however, that in Jack's dying wish to Rose he tells her that she's going to have "lots of babies". Again, this is totally innocent, but it's still a sign that Cameron values procreation and the nurturing of consciousness above all else. If somebody else wrote that scene, it's possible that Jack would wish for Rose to become the first female baseball player or something like that. Instead, he wants her to go forth and multiply.

_________

ENDNOTES:
(1) Quote from the epilogue Cameron wrote for the 'Terminator 2: Judgment Day' DVD

(2) This figure of six features doesn't include 'Piranha Part 2: The Spawning', a 1981 B-movie that he only partially directed and edited.

(3) Stan Winston says this in the documentary on the 2003 'Extreme Edition' of 'Terminator 2: Judgment Day' in the documentary, 'No Fate But What We Make.'

(4) Quote taken from the epilogue Cameron wrote for the 'Terminator 2: Judgment Day' DVD. Cameron says in this essay that the Terminator movies are powerful at least in part because they show that even the least among us, the "lowliest waitress" can have a profound effect n a world seemingly beyond all of our individual control.

(5) ibid.

(6) This sub-plot is only included in the "Special Edition" version of 'Aliens', which is now the more common version. (Although, incidentally, I maintain that the theatrical version is cooler!)

(7) This was an extended essay Cameron wrote as an epilogue for the 1993 laserdisc release of The Abyss: Special Edition. To the best of my knowledge, this essay has not appeared anywhere else. It's extremely engaging (like all Cameron writing) and if you want a copy feel free to e-mail me.